Since living persons Footnote 1Literally men doing or experiencing something.
are the objects of representation, these must necessarily be either good men or inferior—thus only are characters normally distinguished, since ethical differences depend upon vice and virtue—that is to say either better than ourselves or worse or much what we are. It is the same with painters.
Polygnotus depicted men as better than they are and Pauson worse, while Dionysius made likenesses. Footnote 2Polygnotus’s portraits were in the grand style and yet expressive of character(cf. Aristot. Poet. 6.15): Aristophanes aIludes to a Pauson as a perfectly wicked caricaturist
: Dionysius of Colophon earned the name of the man-painter
because he always painted men and presumably made good likenesses.
Clearly each of the above mentioned arts will admit of these distinctions, and they will differ in representing objects which differ from each other in the way here described.
In painting too, and flute-playing and harp-playing, these diversities may certainly be found, and it is the same in prose and in unaccompanied verse.
For instance Homer’s people are better,
Cleophon’s are like,
while in Hegemon of Thasos, the first writer of parodies, and in Nicochares, the author of the Poltrooniad, they are worse.
Footnote 3Cleophon wrote epics
(i.e., hexameter poems), describing scenes of daily life in commonplace diction (cf. Aristot. Poet. 22.2): Hegemon wrote mock epics in the style of the surviving Battle of Frog and Mice: of Nicochares nothing is known, but his forte was evidently satire.
It is the same in dithyrambic and nomic poetry, for instance . . . a writer might draw characters like the Cyclops as drawn by Timotheus and Philoxenus. Footnote 4Both famous dithyramhic poets. There is evidence that Philoxenus treated Polyphemus in the vein of satire: Timotheus may have drawn a more dignified picture.
It is just in this respect that tragedy differs from comedy. The latter sets out to represent people as worse than they are to-day, the former as better.