For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.

By a general truth I mean the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say either probably or necessarily. That is what poetry aims at in giving names to the characters.The names indicate types. This is obvious, as he says, in Comedy and is also true of Greek Tragedy, which, although it deals with traditional heroes regarded as real people, yet keeps to a few stories in which each character has become a type. In Chapter 17. the dramatist is recommended to sketch first his outline plot, making it clear and coherent, before he puts in the names. A particular fact is what Alcibiades did or what was done to him.

In the case of comedy this has now become obvious, for comedians construct their plots out of probable incidents and then put in any names that occur to them. They do not, like the iambic satirists, write about individuals.Aristophanes of course did write about individuals. But Aristotle is thinking of the New Comedy, where the names of the characters were invented by the author and there was no reference to real people.

In tragedy, on the other hand, they keep to real names. The reason is that what is possible carries conviction. If a thing has not happened, we do not yet believe in its possibility, but what has happened is obviously possible. Had it been impossible, it would not have happened.

It is true that in some tragedies one or two of the names are familiar and the rest invented; indeed in some they are all invented, as for instance in Agathon’s ,The name, apparently, of an imaginary hero. The word might be Ἄνθος, but The Flower is an unlikely title for a Greek tragedy. where both the incidents and the names are invented and yet it is none the less a favourite.