What Recognition is has been already explained. We will now enumerate
its kinds.
First, the least artistic form, which, from poverty of wit, is
most commonly employed recognition by signs. Of these some are
congenital,--such as 'the spear which the earth-born race bear on their
bodies,' or the stars introduced by Carcinus in his Thyestes. Others are
acquired after birth; and of these some are bodily marks, as scars; some
external tokens, as necklaces, or the little ark in the Tyro by which
the discovery is effected. Even these admit of more or less skilful
treatment. Thus in the recognition of Odysseus by his scar, the
discovery is made in one way by the nurse, in another by the swineherds.
The use of tokens for the express purpose of proof--and, indeed,
any formal proof with or without tokens--is a less artistic mode of
recognition. A better kind is that which comes about by a turn of
incident, as in the Bath Scene in the Odyssey.
Next come the recognitions invented at will by the poet, and on that
account wanting in art. For example, Orestes in the Iphigenia reveals
the fact that he is Orestes. She, indeed, makes herself known by the
letter; but he, by speaking himself, and saying what the poet, not what
the plot requires. This, therefore, is nearly allied to the fault above
mentioned:--for Orestes might as well have brought tokens with him.
Another similar instance is the 'voice of the shuttle' in the Tereus of
Sophocles.
The third kind depends on memory when the sight of some object awakens
a feeling: as in the Cyprians of Dicaeogenes, where the hero breaks into
tears on seeing the picture; or again in the 'Lay of Alcinous,' where
Odysseus, hearing the minstrel play the lyre, recalls the past and
weeps; and hence the recognition.
The fourth kind is by process of reasoning. Thus in the Choephori: 'Some
one resembling me has come: no one resembles me but Orestes: therefore
Orestes has come.' Such too is the discovery made by Iphigenia in the
play of Polyidus the Sophist. It was a natural reflection for Orestes to
make, 'So I too must die at the altar like my sister.' So, again, in
the Tydeus of Theodectes, the father says, 'I came to find my son, and
I lose my own life.' So too in the Phineidae: the women, on seeing the
place, inferred their fate:--'Here we are doomed to die, for here
we were cast forth.' Again, there is a composite kind of recognition
involving false inference on the part of one of the characters, as in
the Odysseus Disguised as a Messenger. A said <that no one else was able
to bend the bow;... hence B (the disguised Odysseus) imagined that A
would> recognise the bow which, in fact, he had not seen; and to bring
about a recognition by this means that the expectation A would recognise
the bow is false inference.
But, of all recognitions, the best is that which arises from the
incidents themselves, where the startling discovery is made by natural
means. Such is that in the Oedipus of Sophocles, and in the Iphigenia;
for it was natural that Iphigenia should wish to dispatch a letter.
These recognitions alone dispense with the artificial aid of tokens or
amulets. Next come the recognitions by process of reasoning.