The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

Achilleos, ‘about
Achilles;’ and the like. It is precisely because such phrases are
not part of the current idiom that they give distinction to the
style. This, however, he failed to see.
    It is a great matter to observe propriety in these several modes
of expression, as also in compound words, strange (or rare) words,
and so forth. But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of
metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark
of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for
resemblances.
    Of the various kinds of words, the compound are best adapted to
dithyrambs, rare words to heroic poetry, metaphors to iambic. In
heroic poetry, indeed, all these varieties are serviceable. But in
iambic verse, which reproduces, as far as may be, familiar speech,
the most appropriate words are those which are found even in prose.
These are the current or proper, the metaphorical, the
ornamental.
    Concerning Tragedy and imitation by means of action this may
suffice.
XXIII
    As to that poetic imitation which is narrative in form and
employs a single meter, the plot manifestly ought, as in a tragedy,
to be constructed on dramatic principles. It should have for its
subject a single action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a
middle, and an end. It will thus resemble a living organism in all
its unity, and produce the pleasure proper to it. It will differ in
structure from historical compositions, which of necessity present
not a single action, but a single period, and all that happened
within that period to one person or to many, little connected
together as the events may be. For as the sea-fight at Salamis and
the battle with the Carthaginians in Sicily took place at the same
time, but did not tend to any one result, so in the sequence of
events, one thing sometimes follows another, and yet no single
result is thereby produced. Such is the practice, we may say, of
most poets. Here again, then, as has been already observed, the
transcendent excellence of Homer is manifest. He never attempts to
make the whole war of Troy the subject of his poem, though that war
had a beginning and an end. It would have been too vast a theme,
and not easily embraced in a single view. If, again, he had kept it
within moderate limits, it must have been over-complicated by the
variety of the incidents. As it is, he detaches a single portion,
and admits as episodes many events from the general story of the
war—such as the Catalogue of the ships and others—thus diversifying
the poem. All other poets take a single hero, a single period, or
an action single indeed, but with a multiplicity of parts. Thus did
the author of the Cypria and of the Little Iliad. For this reason
the Iliad and the Odyssey each furnish the subject of one tragedy,
or, at most, of two; while the Cypria supplies materials for many,
and the Little Iliad for eight—the Award of the Arms, the
Philoctetes, the Neoptolemus, the Eurypylus, the Mendicant
Odysseus, the Laconian Women, the Fall of Ilium, the Departure of
the Fleet.
XXIV
    Again, Epic poetry must have as many kinds as Tragedy: it must
be simple, or complex, or ‘ethical,’or ‘pathetic.’ The parts also,
with the exception of song and spectacle, are the same; for it
requires Reversals of the Situation, Recognitions, and Scenes of
Suffering. Moreover, the thoughts and the diction must be artistic.
In all these respects Homer is our earliest and sufficient model.
Indeed each of his poems has a twofold character. The Iliad is at
once simple and ‘pathetic,’ and the Odyssey complex (for
Recognition scenes run through it), and at the same time ‘ethical.’
Moreover, in diction and thought they are supreme.
    Epic poetry differs from Tragedy in the scale on which it is
constructed, and in its meter. As regards scale or length, we have
already laid down an adequate limit: the beginning and the end must
be capable of being brought within a single view. This condition
will be satisfied by poems on a smaller scale than the old epics,
and answering in length to the group of tragedies presented at a
single sitting.
    Epic poetry has, however, a great—a special—capacity for
enlarging its dimensions, and we can see the reason. In Tragedy we
cannot imitate several lines of actions carried on at one and the
same time; we must confine ourselves to the action on the stage and
the part taken by the players. But in Epic poetry, owing to the
narrative form, many events simultaneously transacted can