There is another art which imitates by means of language alone,
and that either in prose or verse- which verse, again, may either
combine different meters or consist of but one kind- but this has
hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could
apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues
on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic,
elegiac, or any similar meter. People do, indeed, add the word 'maker'
or 'poet' to the name of the meter, and speak of elegiac poets, or
epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation
that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all to the name.
Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out
in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet
Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter, so that
it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather
than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic
imitation were to combine all meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur,
which is a medley composed of meters of all kinds, we should bring him
too under the general term poet.
So much then for these distinctions.
There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above
mentioned- namely, rhythm, tune, and meter. Such are Dithyrambic and
Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them originally
the difference is, that in the first two cases these means are all
employed in combination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now
another.
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