Poetics

​Other things are spoken in accordance with metaphor, as for instance: ‘Now all the gods and men slept all night long’; yet at the same time he says: ‘Indeed, whenever he looked at the Trojan plain, [he marveled at] the din of flutes and pipes’; for ‘all’ is spoken in accordance with metaphor instead of ‘many’, since the ‘all’ is a kind of ‘many’. And: ‘who alone has no share’ is in accordance with metaphor, since the most well-known is called the only one.

​Other things are solved in accordance with accent (prosody), just as Hippias of Thasos solved: ‘we grant (didomen) him to win glory’ and: ‘part of which (hou) rots with rain’.

​Other things are solved by division (punctuation), as in Empedocles: ‘And immediately things grew to be mortal that previously had learned to be immortal, and things unmixed before were mixed.’

​Other things are solved by ambiguity, as: ‘and more of the night has passed’; for ‘more (pleio)’ is ambiguous.

​Other things are solved in accordance with the custom of language. People call mixed drink ‘wine’, whence has been written: ‘greave of newly-wrought tin (kassiteros)’; and they call those who work iron ‘bronze-smiths (chalkeas)’, whence Ganymede is said to pour wine (oinocheuein) for Zeus, though they do not drink wine. But this also might be in accordance with metaphor.

​And also when a word seems to signify some contradiction, one must examine in how many ways it might signify in the passage spoken, as for instance: ‘there the bronze spear was stayed (escheto)’. ​Its being hindered ‘in this way’ can be taken in several ways, either in this way or in that, as one might best understand it; whether it was stopped straight against the surface, or as ​Glaucon says, that some people pre-suppose something unreasonably, and having themselves passed a vote, they draw inferences, and they censure as if he had spoken whatever they think, if it is contradictory to their own opinion.

​This has happened in the case of Icarius. For they think he is a Laconian, and so it is strange that Telemachus did not meet him when he went to Lacedaemon. But perhaps it is as the Cephallenians say; for they say that Odysseus married from among them, and that his father-in-law was Icadius and not Icarius; and it is likely that the problem exists because of an error.

​In general, the impossible must be referred to the requirements of poetry, or to what is better, or to opinion.

​For in respect to poetry, a plausible impossible is preferable to an implausible possible;... that they should be such as Zeuxis used to paint, ​but it is better, for the pattern (paradigm) must surpass [reality]. To those things which they say are irrational, [one must refer to what people say];

​and in this way, and also because sometimes it is not irrational; for it is likely that things also happen contrary to likelihood.

​Contradictions in language should be examined in the same way as refutations in arguments, to see whether the same thing is said, and in relation to the same thing, and in the same way, so that [one must refer] either to what the poet himself says or to what a prudent man would assume.

​But censure of both irrationality and depravity is correct when, there being no necessity, the poet makes no [good] use of the irrational, as Euripides with Aegeus, or of depravity, as in the Orestes that of Menelaus.

​The censures, then, are brought from five classes: either as being impossible, or irrational, or harmful, or contradictory, or contrary to the correctness of art. And the solutions must be examined from the mentioned numbers; there are twelve.