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.

A third difference in these arts is the manner in which one may represent each of these objects.

For in representing the same objects by the same means it is possible to proceed either partly by narrative and partly by assuming a character other than your own—this is Homer’s method—or by remaining yourself without any such change, or else to represent the characters as carrying out the whole action themselves.

These, as we said above, are the three differences which form the several species of the art of representation, the means, the objects, and the manner.

It follows that in one respect Sophocles would be the same kind of artist as Homer, for both represent good men, and in another respect he would resemble Aristophanes, for they both represent men in action and doing things. And that according to some is the reason why they are called dramas, because they present people as doingDrama being derived from δρᾶν to do. things.