and you must mind that the episodes are appropriate, as, for instance, in the case of Orestes the madness that led to his capture and his escape by means of the purification. In the Iphigeneia in Tauris Orestes is captured because he is suffering from a fit of mania; and at the end Iphigeneia pretends that the image of Artemis has been infected by the blood-guiltiness of the Greek strangers, and that, before they can be sacrificed, she must cleanse both image and strangers secretly in the sea. Thus they all escape together by boat. Now in drama the episodes are short, but it is by them that the epic gains its length. The story of the Odyssey is quite short. A man is for many years away from home and his footsteps are dogged by Poseidon and he is all alone. Moreover, affairs at home are in such a state that his estate is being wasted by suitors and a plot laid against his son, but after being storm-tossed he arrives himself, reveals who he is, and attacks them, with the result that he is saved and destroys his enemies. That is the essence, the rest is episodes. In every tragedy there is a complication and a denouement. The Greek says simply tying and loosing. Complication and denouement seem clumsy equivalents, yet they are the words we use in dramatic criticism. The incidents outside the plot and some of those in it usually form the complication, the rest is the denouement.