being claimed by the Megarians both here on the mainland, contending it arose during their democracy,²⁰ and in Sicily, the homeland of the poet Epicharmus, a much earlier figure than Chionides and Magnes;²¹ and tragedy being claimed by some of those in the Peloponnese);²² and they cite the names as evidence. They say that they call villages kōmai, while the Athenians call them dēmoi; their contention is that comic performers [kōmōdoi] got their name not from revelling [kōmazein] but from wandering through villages when banned from the city. And they say their own word for acting is dran,²³ while the Athenians’ is prattein. So much, then, by way of discussion of the number and nature of the distinctions within mimesis.

It can be seen that poetry was broadly engendered by a pair of causes, both natural. For it is an instinct of human beings, from childhood, to engage in mimesis²⁴ (indeed, this distinguishes them from other animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mimesis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that everyone enjoys mimetic objects. A common occurrence indicates this: we enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose actual sight is painful to us, such as the forms of the vilest animals and of corpses. The explanation