6
The others, on the contrary, all write about a single hero or about a single period or about a single action with a great many parts, the authors, for example, of the Cypria and the Little Iliad.As we have seen already in chapter 8, a poem or a play must be one story and not several stories about one hero. Thus, since the Iliad and Odyssey have this essential unity (i.e., one thread runs through the narrative of each), few plays can be made out of them but many out of the Cypria or the Little Iliad, which are merely collections of lays on similar themes.
7
The result is that out of an Iliad or an Odyssey only one tragedy can be made, or two at most, whereas several have been made out of the Cypria, and out of the Little Iliad more than eight, e.g. The Award of Arms, Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, Eurypylus, The Begging, The Laconian Women, The Sack of Troy, and Sailing of the Fleet, and Sinon, too, and The Trojan Women.
1
The next point is that there must be the same varieties of epic as of tragedySee Aristot. Poet. 18.4.: an epic must be simple or complex,See chapter 10. or else turn on character or on calamity.
2
The constituent parts, too, are the same with the exception of song and spectacle. Epic needs reversals and discoveries and calamities, and the thought and diction too must be good.
3
All these were used by Homer for the first time, and used well. Of his poems he made the one, the Iliad, a simple story turning on calamity, and the Odyssey a complex story—it is full of discoveries—turning on character. Besides this they surpass all other poems in diction and thought.
4
Epic differs from tragedy in the length of the composition and in metre.
