Comedy he dismisses very briefly. He thinks that it ἔλαθε διὰ τὸ μὴ σπουδάζεσθαι—little attention was paid to it, as not being taken seriously. Epic and tragedy must be treated first—tragedy first of all. And then he plunges straight into the famous definition of tragedy, discussion of which had best be reserved. The definition itself is this: “An imitation of an action, serious, complete, and possessing magnitude, in language sweetened with each kind of sweetening in the several parts, conveyed by action and not recital, possessing pity and terror, accomplishing the purgation of such[39] emotions.” Tragedy will require scenic arrangements, musical accompaniments, and “words,” as modern actors say; his own term, “lexis,” is not so very different. But it will also require character, “thought,” and plot or story. The most important of all is the last, which he also describes by another name, the “setting together of incidents,” the Action—to which he thinks character quite subsidiary, and indeed facultative. There cannot, he says categorically, be tragedy without action; there may be without character. “The most powerful elements of emotional interest,” as Professor Butcher translates οἷς ψυχαγωγεῖ, “the things with which tragedy leads souls,” are revolutions and discoveries, and these are parts of action. Novices can do good things in diction and in character, not in plot. Still Character is second. Thought is third, Diction apparently a bad fourth. Song is only a chief embellishment or “sweetening,” and Scenery is the last of all, because, though influencing the soul, it is inartistic and outside poetry. So he turns once more as to the principal or chief thing, to the plot or action. This is to be a complete whole, and of a certain magnitude, with a beginning, middle, and end. A very small animal organism[40] cannot be beautiful, as neither can one “ten thousand stadia long.” Then he comes to the great question of Unity—or, since that word is much blurred by usage, let us say “what makes the story one.” It is not enough to have a single hero; life, even a part of a life, is too complicated for that. We must have just so much and just so little that the action shall present neither gaps nor redundancies. Nor need the poet by any means stick to historical or prescribed fact—the probable, not the actual, is his game. He may invent wholly (subject to this law of probability) if he likes. Plots with episodes are bad. Footnote 39: There are strong arguments for rendering τῶν τοιούτων not “such” but “these,” and Professor Butcher actually does so. Footnote 40: