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III
There is still a third difference--the manner in which each of these
objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects
the same, the poet may imitate by narration--in which case he can either
take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person,
unchanged--or he may present all his characters as living and moving
before us.
These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which
distinguish artistic imitation,--the medium, the objects, and the manner.
So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind
as Homer--for both imitate higher types of character; from another point
of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes--for both imitate persons
acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of 'drama' is given to such
poems, as representing action. For the same reason the Dorians claim the
invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward
by the Megarians,--not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it
originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Sicily,
for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier than Chionides and Magnes,
belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of
the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language.
The outlying villages, they say, are by them called {kappa omega mu alpha
iota}, by the Athenians {delta eta mu iota}: and they assume that
Comedians were so named not from {kappa omega mu 'alpha zeta epsilon iota
nu}, 'to revel,' but because they wandered from village to village (kappa
alpha tau alpha / kappa omega mu alpha sigma), being excluded
contemptuously from the city. They add also that the Dorian word for
'doing' is {delta rho alpha nu}, and the Athenian, {pi rho alpha tau tau
epsilon iota nu}.
This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of
imitation.
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