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.