art.

As a rule, no doubt, the difficulty, even though merely verbal, lies
beyond the reach of so simple a tool as literal translation. To say
that tragedy 'imitate.g.od men' while comedy 'imitates bad men'
strikes a modern reader as almost meaningless. The truth is that
neither 'good' nor 'bad' is an exact equivalent of the Greek. It would
be nearer perhaps to say that, relatively speaking, you look up to the
characters of tragedy, and down upon those of comedy. High or low,
serious or trivial, many other pairs of words would have to be called
in, in order to cover the wide range of the common Greek words. And
the point is important, because we have to consider whether in Chapter
VI Aristotle really lays it down that tragedy, so far from being the
story of un-happiness that we think it, is properly an imitation of
_eudaimonia_--a word often translated 'happiness', but meaning
something more like 'high life' or 'blessedness'. [1]

[1] See Margoliouth, p. 121. By water, with most editors, emends the
text.

Another difficult word which constantly recurs in the _Poetics_ is
_prattein_ or _praxis_, generally translated 'to act' or 'action'. But
_prattein_, like our 'do', also has an intransitive meaning 'to fare'
either well or ill; and Professor Margoliouth has pointed out that it
seems more true to say that tragedy shows how men 'fare' than how they
'act'. It shows thei.e.periences or fortunes rather than merely their
deeds. But one must not draw the line too bluntly. I should doubt
whether a classical Greek writer was ordinarily conscious of the
distinction between the two meanings. Certainly it i.e.sier to regard
happiness as a way of faring than as a form of action. Yet Aristotle