Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/361

 Aristotle's treatise ox poetry. 335 mther to Comedy; for there, even if the bitterest enemies, like Orestes and jEgisthus, are introduced, they quit the scene at hst in perfect friendship, and no blood is shed on either side. Terror and pity may be raised by the decoration^ the mere spectacle ; Cap. xiv. but they may also arise from the circumstances of the action itself; n/odS^TU-'^ which is far preferable, and shows a superior poet. For the fable should andpity?^ be so constructed, that, without the assistance of the sight, its incidents may excite horror and commiseration in those who hear them only; an effect which every one, who hears the story of the CEdipus, must expe- rience. But, to produce this effect by means of the decoration, discovers want of art in the poet, who must also be supplied by the public with an expensive appai;atus (vopryyta). As to those poets who make use of the decoration in order to produce, not the terrible, but the marvellous only, their purpose has nothing in com- mon with that of Tragedy ; for we are not to seek for every sort of plea- sure from Tragedy, but for that only which is proper to the species. Since, therefore, it is the business of the tragic poet to give that pleasure which arises from pity and terror, through imitation, it is evident that he ought to produce that effect by the circumstances of the action itself. Let us, then, see of what hind those incidents are which apjoear most terrible or piteous. Now such actions must, of necessity, hajjpen between persons who are either friends or enemies, or indifferent to each other. If an enemy kills, or purposes to kill, an enemy, in neither case is any com- miseration raised in us, beyond what necessarily arises from the nature of the action itself The case is the same, when the persons are neither friends nor enemies. But when such disasters haj^pen between friends — when, for instance, the brother kills, or is going to kill, his brother, the son his father, the mother her son, or the reverse — these, and othei-s of a similar kind, are the proper incidents for the poet's choice. The received tragic subjects, therefore, he is not at liberty essentially to alter; Clytoemnestra must die by the hand oi Orestes, and Eriphyle by that of Alcrneeon: but it is his province to invent other subjects, and to make a skilful use of those which he finds already established. What I mean by a skilful use, I proceed to explain. The atrocious action may be perpetrated knowingly and inten- tionally, as was usual with the earlier poets ; and as Euripides, also, has represented Medea destroying her children. It may, likewise, be perpetrated by those who are ignorant, at the time, of the connexion between them and the injured pei-son, which