distinction, since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing
the whole of mankind. It follows, therefore, that the agents
represented must be either above our own level of goodness, or beneath
it, or just such as we are in the same way as, with the painters, the
personages of Polygnotus are better than we are, those of Pauson
worse, and those of Dionysius just like ourselves. It is clear that
each of the above-mentioned arts will admit of these differences, and
that it will become a separate art by representing objects with this
point of difference. Even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing
such diversities are possible; and they are also possible in the
nameless art that uses language, prose or verse without harmony, as
its means; Homer's personages, for instance, are better than we are;
Cleophon's are on our own level; and those of Hegemon of Thasos, the
first writer of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the _Diliad_,
are beneath it. The same is true of the Dithyramb and the Nome: the
personages may be presented in them with the difference exemplified in
the ... of ... and Argas, and in the Cyclopses of Timotheus and
Philoxenus. This difference it is that distinguishes Tragedy and
Comedy also; the one would make its personages worse, and the other
better, than the men of the present day.



3


III. A third difference in these arts is in the manner in which each
kind of object is represented. Given both the same means and the same
kind of object for imitation, one may either (1) speak at one moment
in narrative and at another in an assumed character, as Homer does; or