can use the passive of _prattein_ for things 'done' or 'gone through'
(e.g. 52a, 22, 29: 55a, 25).

The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern
attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. Greek was
very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of
grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon
dictionaries. An instance is provided by Aristotle's famous saying
that the typical tragic hero is one who falls from high state or fame,
not through vice or depravity, but by some great _hamartia_.
_Hamartia_ means originally a 'bad shot' or 'error', but is currently
used for 'offence' or 'sin'. Aristotle clearly means that the typical
hero is a great man with 'something wrong' in his life or character;
but I think it is a mistake of method to argue whether he means 'an
intellectual error' or 'a moral flaw'. The word is not so precise.

Similarly, when Aristotle says that a deed of strife or disaster is
more tragic when it occurs 'amid affections' or 'among people who love
each other', no doubt the phrase, as Aristotle's own examples show,
would primarily suggest to a Greek feuds between near relations. Yet
some of the meaning is lost if one translates simply 'within the
family'.

There is another series of obscurities or confusions in the _Poetics_
which, unless I am mistaken, arises from the fact that Aristotle was
writing at a time when the great age of Greek tragedy was long past,
and was using language formed in previous generations. The words and
phrases remained in the tradition, but the forms of art and activity
which they denoted had sometimes changed in the interval. If we date
the _Poetics_ about the year 330 B.C., as seems probable, that is more