The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

‘to pour the wine to Zeus,’
though the gods do not drink wine. So too workers in iron are
called chalkeas, or ‘workers in bronze.’ This, however, may also be
taken as a metaphor.
    Again, when a word seems to involve some inconsistency of
meaning, we should consider how many senses it may bear in the
particular passage. For example: ‘there was stayed the spear of
bronze’—we should ask in how many ways we may take ‘being checked
there.’ The true mode of interpretation is the precise opposite of
what Glaucon mentions. Critics, he says, jump at certain groundless
conclusions; they pass adverse judgement and then proceed to reason
on it; and, assuming that the poet has said whatever they happen to
think, find fault if a thing is inconsistent with their own
fancy.
    The question about Icarius has been treated in this fashion. The
critics imagine he was a Lacedaemonian. They think it strange,
therefore, that Telemachus should not have met him when he went to
Lacedaemon. But the Cephallenian story may perhaps be the true one.
They allege that Odysseus took a wife from among themselves, and
that her father was Icadius, not Icarius. It is merely a mistake,
then, that gives plausibility to the objection.
    In general, the impossible must be justified by reference to
artistic requirements, or to the higher reality, or to received
opinion. With respect to the requirements of art, a probable
impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet
possible. Again, it may be impossible that there should be men such
as Zeuxis painted. ‘Yes,’ we say, ‘but the impossible is the higher
thing; for the ideal type must surpass the realty.’ To justify the
irrational, we appeal to what is commonly said to be. In addition
to which, we urge that the irrational sometimes does not violate
reason; just as ‘it is probable that a thing may happen contrary to
probability.’
    Things that sound contradictory should be examined by the same
rules as in dialectical refutation—whether the same thing is meant,
in the same relation, and in the same sense. We should therefore
solve the question by reference to what the poet says himself, or
to what is tacitly assumed by a person of intelligence.
    The element of the irrational, and, similarly, depravity of
character, are justly censured when there is no inner necessity for
introducing them. Such is the irrational element in the
introduction of Aegeus by Euripides and the badness of Menelaus in
the Orestes.
    Thus, there are five sources from which critical objections are
drawn. Things are censured either as impossible, or irrational, or
morally hurtful, or contradictory, or contrary to artistic
correctness. The answers should be sought under the twelve heads
above mentioned.
XXVI
    The question may be raised whether the Epic or Tragic mode of
imitation is the higher. If the more refined art is the higher, and
the more refined in every case is that which appeals to the better
sort of audience, the art which imitates anything and everything is
manifestly most unrefined. The audience is supposed to be too dull
to comprehend unless something of their own is thrown by the
performers, who therefore indulge in restless movements. Bad
flute-players twist and twirl, if they have to represent ‘the
quoit-throw,’ or hustle the coryphaeus when they perform the
Scylla. Tragedy, it is said, has this same defect. We may compare
the opinion that the older actors entertained of their successors.
Mynniscus used to call Callippides ‘ape’ on account of the
extravagance of his action, and the same view was held of Pindarus.
Tragic art, then, as a whole, stands to Epic in the same relation
as the younger to the elder actors. So we are told that Epic poetry
is addressed to a cultivated audience, who do not need gesture;
Tragedy, to an inferior public. Being then unrefined, it is
evidently the lower of the two.
    Now, in the first place, this censure attaches not to the poetic
but to the histrionic art; for gesticulation may be equally
overdone in epic recitation, as by Sosistratus, or in lyrical
competition, as by Mnasitheus the Opuntian. Next, all action is not
to be condemned—any more than all dancing—but only that of bad
performers. Such was the fault found in Callippides, as also in
others of our own day, who are censured for representing degraded
women. Again, Tragedy like Epic poetry produces its effect even
without action; it reveals its power by mere reading. If, then, in
all