all that comes in between two whole choral songs; the Exode
all that follows after the last choral song. In the choral portion the
Parode is the whole first statement of the chorus; a Stasimon, a song of
the chorus without anapaests or trochees; a Commas, a lamentation sung
by chorus and actor in concert. The parts of Tragedy to be used as
formative elements in the whole we have already mentioned; the above
are its parts from the point of view of its quantity, or the separate
sections into which it is divided.

13

The next points after what we have said above will be these: (1) What is
the poet to aim at, and what is he to avoid, in constructing his Plots?
and (2) What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends?

We assume that, for the finest form of Tragedy, the Plot must be not
simple but complex; and further, that it must imitate actions arousing
pity and fear, since that is the distinctive function of this kind of
imitation. It follows, therefore, that there are three forms of Plot to
be avoided. (1) A good man must not be seen passing from happiness to
misery, or (2) a bad man from misery to happiness.

The first situation is not fear-inspiring or piteous, but simply odious
to us. The second is the most untragic that can be; it has no one of the
requisites of Tragedy; it does not appeal either to the human feeling in
us, or to our pity, or to our fears. Nor, on the other hand, should (3)
an extremely bad man be seen falling from happiness into misery. Such
a story may arouse the human feeling in us, but it will not move us to
either pity or fear; pity is occasioned by undeserved misfortune, and
fear by that of one like ourselves; so that there will be nothing either
piteous or fear-inspiring in the situation. There remains, then, the
intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and
just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and
depravity but by some error of judgement, of the number of those in the
enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity; e.g. Oedipus, Thyestes,
and the men of note of similar families. The perfect Plot, accordingly,
must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue; the change
in the hero's fortunes must be not from misery to happiness, but on the
contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not
in any depravity, but in some great error on his part; the man himself
being either such as we have desc