But this is bad work, since tragedy represents not only a complete action but also incidents that cause fear and pity, and this happens most of all when the incidents are unexpected and yet one is a consequence of the other.The logic suffers from ellipse. Plays which fail to exhibit the sequence of cause and effect are condemned (1) because they lack the unity which befits tragedy, (2) because they miss that supreme effect of fear or pity produced by incidents which, though unexpected, are seen to be no mere accident but the inevitable result of what has gone before.

For in that way the incidents will cause more amazement than if they happened mechanically and accidentally, since the most amazing accidental occurrences are those which seem to have been providential, for instance when the statue of Mitys at Argos killed the man who caused Mitys’s death by falling on him at a festival. Such events do not seem to be mere accidents.

So such plots as these must necessarily be the best.

Some plots are simple and some complex, as indeed the actions represented by the plots are obviously such.

By a simple action I mean one that is single and continuous in the sense of our definition above,In chapters 7 and 8. wherein the change of fortune occurs without reversal or discovery;