Poetics (2.2-2.6)

Polygnotus depicted men as better than they are and Pauson worse, while Dionysius made 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.[*]

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.[*]