Pathos in The Poetics of Aristotle: by B. R. Rees

PATHOS IN THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE
By B. R. REES
T HE past thirty years have brought us much closer to the meaning

of many puzzling terms employed by Aristotle in the Poetics. But
there are still many whose meaning may never be established with any
certainty, partly because of inconsistencies or deficiencies in the argu-
ment and partly because of our own ignorance of the dramatic and
critical terminology of the fourth century. For example, it is reasonable
to assume that the terms used by Aristotle to describe his three uepr) of
tragedy—irepnrETEia, dcvayvcoptcns, and irdtOos—were all part of the
technical vocabulary of the contemporary theatre, and that if only we
were familiar with that vocabulary, we should not find Aristotle's
vagueness and carelessness in explanation such a hindrance to under-
standing.
The first two U£pr| have received much attention from scholars and
critics from the Renaissance onwards, and we should be justified in
thinking that we are, with certain reservations, reasonably clear by now
as to their original meaning in the Poetics: TrepiTTETEia is a change in the
direction of the tragic action which is either a necessary result of previous
events or, at least, is not improbable in the light of what has already
happened: dtvocyvcopiais is the discovery of the true identity of other
persons in relation to oneself, though sometimes it might be described
more correctly as the realization of the circumstances in which one is
placed and of which one has hitherto been ignorant. One or other or
both of these must take place in a plot which can properly be classified
as 'complex' as opposed to the 'simple' plot whose action proceeds from
beginning to end without either.
Aristotle devotes almost two chapters, 10 and n , to these two M.epr|
and a further chapter, 14, to illustrations of dvcxyvoopiais. But irctOos
gets only two lines of explanation, with its subsequent illustration buried
in a discussion of the sources of pity and fear, and editors and com-
mentators have for the most part been content to leave it quietly in the
background with perhaps a sentence or two of rather disgruntled com-
ment—with the exception, that is, of G. F. Else, for whom it is an essen-
tial piece in the jigsaw of his own theories.1 Even D. W. Lucas fails to
maintain his normally high standards of clarity in dealing with pathos ;2
J. de Romilly's fascinating monograph, though concerned mainly with
1
Aristotle's Poetics: the Argument (Harvard, 1957), 356 ff., 414 ff.
2
Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford, 1968), 134 f.
J871.1 B
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2 PATHOS IN THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE
techniques in presenting scenes of violence and suffering, makes no
attempt to relate its investigation to Aristotelian pathos and even uses
the word in a quite non-Aristotelian sense;1 John Jones does not find it
necessary to mention pathos at all.2
The general uncertainty as to the meaning of pathos in the Poetics is
well illustrated by translators when rendering it in the crucial passage:
'suffering', 'the scene of suffering', 'the moving accident', 'suffering
or calamity', 'crisis of feeling', 'catastrofe', 'die leidvolle Tat', Teve-
nement pathetique'—these are some examples. Recently it has also
been illustrated in the paragraph devoted to it in Bremer's account of
hamartia :3
For an action to be complete, there should be a pathos, which is a scene of
suffering, a destructive or painful action; Aristotle evidently thinks of instances
like the agonizing Heracles in Sophocles' Trachiniae, the wounds and pain
of Oedipus in Oedipus Tyrannus, the sad plight of Euripides' Trojan Women,
or the imminent fratricide in the latter's IT. Apparently pathos is for Aristotle
a part of tragedy even when it (e.g. the actual scene of somebody being killed)
does not occur: in the IT there is a scene of suffering in so far as Orestes'
experience of imminent death is a pathos. Being a ninncris q>o|3£pcov KOU EAEEI-
vcov, tragedy should always contain a central disaster or painful event in
which the characters of the play are (or are almost) involved.
It would be unfair to be too critical of a scholar to whom we are so
indebted for his full documentation of one of the key terms of the
Poetics simply because he has been forced to compress into a narrow
space his thoughts on another not directly related to his main theme;
and it is probable that not many of us could have done any better in his
situation. But one must confess that the impression produced on the
reader might be rather similar to that of an American visitor to Lord's
when presented with a brief summary of the rules of cricket. There is
much in this paragraph of Bremer's which is true, but there is also
much which is misleading or at least puzzling. A reader might ask
the following questions: Is pathos a scene or is it an action? What do the
words 'evidently' and 'apparently' imply? Are the examples given to be
understood as 'scenes' or 'actions' ? If Oedipus' wounds and pain con-
stitute the pathos in OT, why does Aristotle place it firmly in the ante-
cedents of the plot?4 How can an 'actual scene' not occur? What is
meant by saying that 'Orestes' experience of imminent death is a pathos' ?
How can the characters of a play be said to be 'almost involved' in 'a
central disaster or painful event' ?
1
L'Evolution du pathetique d'Eschyle a Euripide (Paris, 1961): see especially :6 and
38, where to pathos is contrasted with to drama.
1
On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962).
3
J. M. Bremer, Hamartia (Amsterdam, 1969), 6f.
PATHOS IN T H E POETICS OF A R I S T O T L E 3
Clearly there is much here that requires more detailed explanation.
The plain truth is that commentators and critics generally have tended to
gloss over pathos as a relatively unimportant item when compared with
other technical terms employed by Aristotle in the Poetics. The purpose
of this paper is to re-examine the passages in which it is referred to either
explicitly or implicitly, to ask and to try to answer certain fundamental
questions which seem to arise from them, and so to arrive at a statement
of what may safely be said about the original meaning of the word and
of what must in the present stage of our knowledge be left unsaid.
First, the definition of pathos, which, like so many of the definitions
given by Aristotle in the Poetics, makes one wonder what would have
happened to his great reputation as a thinker and expositor if all his
works had reached the same standard of lucidity as this incomplete and
fragmentary collection of dicta:
So then these are two parts of the plot, peripeteia and anagnorisis; pathos
is a third. Of these peripeteia and anagnorisis have been discussed, and pathos
is a destructive or painful action, such as deaths 'in the open' and excessive
pains and woundings and all such things (52b9—13).
Next there is the passage in which Aristotle is discussing what kind of
incidents arouse pity and fear :
Such actions (sc. those which are such as arouse pity or fear) must be of
'friends' against each other or of enemies or of neither. So if an enemy (kills)
an enemy, neither in deed nor in intention (is he) doing anything pitiful
except in the actual pathos; nor if (such acts are done by) persons neither
(friends nor enemies). But when the pathe occur in relationships of 'friend-
ship', for example, when a brother kills or is about to kill or to do something
else of that sort to his brother, or a son to his father, or a mother to her son,
or a son to his mother, these are the acts one should look for (53bi6-22).
Then there are two other places where pathos is clearly being used in
this same sense:
So they (sc. the poets) are forced to have recourse to those families to which
such pathe have happened (54 a i2-i3);
and
For it (sc. epic) also needs peripeteiai and anagnoriseis and pathe (59 b io-n).
And in one other passage too the sense may be the same:
For they (sc. the dancers) too through their rhythms expressed in dance-
figures represent characters and pathe and actions (47*27-8).
But here the sense of fjOos is not as technical as it is to become in the
later discussion, and TTCCSTI and irpo^Eis are also better understood in the
less technical sense of 'what men have done to them and what they do'.
Two other passages obviously use the word in a different sense and
may be dismissed as irrelevant to the present inquiry:
The production of pathe, e.g. pity or fear or anger or such things (56a38-o,);
and
For starting with the same natural qualifications those (poets) who are
emotionally involved are most convincing (s
In the same way, pathe of speech (6obi2) is a technical term of signifi-
cance for linguistics but not drama—except that it could well be said to
preserve the etymology of pathos, being a way of saying 'what happens
to speech' or 'what speech undergoes', that is, 'modifications of speech*.
We then come to possible synonyms for pathos. After discussing
(in 53b) means of arousing pity and fear and the kinds of actions which
are likely to arouse these tragic emotions, Aristotle develops his two
themes in this chapter by a series of illustrations of pathe in which the
neuters of the adjectives SEIVOS and &vf)KEoros seem to be used as
synonyms for the neuter noun TTOCQOS: 'it is possible for men to do the
fearful deed but to do it in ignorance' (53b29-3o), and 'in addition to
these possibilities there is a third too, namely, to be about to do one
of the deeds classed as irremediable because of ignorance' (53b34—5)-
But the use of cnrccQe? in S3b39 strikes an odd note: 'a pathos which is
without pathos' or, perhaps better, 'a pathos which does not involve
destruction or suffering' and so 'a pathos which is a non-pathos'. The
meaning is clear, and those who recall 'consistently inconsistent' in
54*27-8 and dcf^Eis TpccycoSiou in 5oa25 will not be unduly perturbed
by this typically Aristotelian paradox.
Finally, mention must be made of the use of the adjective TTCX6T|TIK6S
to describe a kind of tragedy in 55b34 and a kind of epic in 59bo..
If we now consider what we may justifiably infer from these passages
as a basis for our inquiry into the meaning of pathos, we may arrive at
something like this:
Pathos, like peripetia and anagnorisis, is a 'part' of plot; unlike them it is
not limited to complex plots. It is an action which causes destruction or pain.
It may precede the action of the play or be anticipated and avoided. It arouses
pity and fear because it happens between 'friends'.
Certain questions immediately arise:
1. Has every tragedy a pathos}
2. How can a pathos be an action which does not take place within the
action of the play ?
1
Else translates and interprets this passage differently.
PATHOS IN THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE 5
3. What is 'friendship' and who are 'friends' ?
4. What is meant by ev tcp 9ocvEpco ?
5. What are TTCt0r|TiKcri TpccycpSioa?
1. Every tragedy has a pathos: pathos is essential to tragedy. If we
were to dispute this fact, we should be making nonsense both of Aris-
totle's discussion, already mentioned, of the kind of actions which arouse
pity and fear, and of our own experience of Greek tragedy. Peripeteia
and anagnorisis may be characteristic of the machinery of the complex
plot but pathos is the focal action or event in every plot, whether simple
or complex, 'the lever by which the tragic potentiality is converted into
actuality';1 without it there could be no tragedy. Its importance was
overlooked mainly because Aristotle himself seemed to stress that of the
other two elements of plot. Later on too, in the course of time, the
essence of tragedy came to be almost identified with suffering and
destruction, as the violence naturally associated with pathos moved into
the centre of the tragic stage and overshadowed the other characteristic
features of tragedy—in Seneca, for example, and Renaissance and post-
Renaissance drama. Else may well be close to the truth when he traces
this process from the celebration of the pathe of individual heroes
through Thespis to Aeschylus and when he insists that it was the genius
of Aeschylus which gave to pathos its central role in tragedy.2 There-
after its importance was taken for granted.
2. Yet the pathos which is so vital an element in the plot of a tragedy
need not be presented as an incident in the play itself: for example, the
pathos of Oedipus in OT is not the self-blinding nor the suicide of
Iocasta nor even the mental anguish which afflicts him, but the killing
of a philos, in his case his own father Laius, long before the action of the
play begins. We have Aristotle's confirmation of this assertion, for he
tells us that the pathos in OT is 'outside the events of the play'. But this
pathos is as much a part of OT's dramatic action as any incident which
takes place on the stage in full view of the audience, being in the minds
of the audience right from the start, even before it is dragged out of the
surviving witness. Nor again is it necessary in Aristotle's view that
the pathos should take place at all: he makes this abundantly clear in the
same chapter by preferring the pathos which is avoided or averted to the
other three types mentioned—to the embarrassment of critics who have
been unable to reconcile this preference for one kind of pathos with the
preference expressed elsewhere for a kind of plot which does not contain
it. As Else reminds us, 'the essential thing is the idea of a pathos, the
intention of performing one'.3
1
Else, op. cit. 420.
2
The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy (Harvard, 1965), 87 ff.
3
Aristotle's Poetics, 420.
3. There is little room for doubt as to the meaning of philoi in this
context, especially after Else's thorough discussion of the term.1 The
classical meaning of philoi, and that which it bears in the Nicomachean
Ethics, has been narrowed down in the Poetics to 'those related to each
other by blood', a sense commonly borne by the word in Homer and
the lyric poets. This does not mean that pathe involving relationships
between friends in the common sense of the word are being ruled out
but that tragedy as known to the Greeks again and again concerned
itself with pathe affecting family relationships, so that, as Aristotle
emphasizes, the best tragedies came to be composed around a few
legendary 'houses'. For practical purposes philoi can be understood to
refer to blood relations, though not exclusively, as the use of the word
I)(0p6s as the opposite of qnAos clearly indicates.
4. It is when we reach Aristotle's illustrations of pathos that we meet
the difficulty which has caused acute embarrassment to all editors and
commentators. Lucas, for example, comments: 'It (sc.pathos) is defined
as a "destructive or painful act", but there is a difficulty because it is
illustrated entirely by examples of physical horror, death, bodily pain
experienced on the stage.' As often, Aristotle has obscured the meaning
of the definition by his own illustrations of it, in this case by the addition
of the phrase §v TCO 90tvepco, and many have tried in vain to explain or
get around the difficulty which he has created.
The most ingenious solution is that of Else, though, as he himself
points out, it bears a slight resemblance to that of Rostagni. Like many
others Else refuses to admit that any sense can be made of the passage
if EV TW 9ovEpco is translated 'on the stage', but, unlike many others, he
is unwilling to abandon the phrase altogether. He draws a distinction
between the examples of pathos given by Aristotle, which are 'in the
visible realm', that is to say, physical actions which can take place
visibly, though they need not necessarily do so, and peripeteia and
anagnorisis, which are 'in the realm of the mind'; to put it in other, and
cruder, words pathos can be seen, whereas peripeteia and anagnorisis
can only be imagined or conceived. The main objection to this view is
that it would seem to display a sophistication of thought scarcely shown
by Aristotle elsewhere in the treatise; but it is certainly not helped by
Else's failure to find a clear Aristotelian parallel for the use of the
phrase ev TW 9ccvepco in this sense and the fact that, in his search for
an ancestry for it, he has to depend on Plato's antithesis between vonTov
and opocrov. One would be happier with his explanation if Aristotle
himself, in discussing peripeteia and anagnorisis, had ever indicated that
they were to be regarded as 'in the realm of the mind'; instead we are
simply told that they were 'parts of the plot', as indeed was pathos
1
Op. cit. 349 f., 414f.
also. In addition, Else's theory does not attempt to explain why
Aristotle found it necessary to insert the phrase ev TCO <pctv£pcp in an
attributive position, which inevitably led his readers to assume that
deaths EVTOcpocvEpco were being distinguished from deaths of some other
kind. A. Rostagni1 pays greater attention to the attributive position of the
phrase by distinguishing between the actual examples of pathos, which
take place on the stage, and pathos itself, which is a notional element
in the plot and therefore not visible. I suspect that both explanations,
though ingenious, are far too subtle to be consistent with the general
crudeness of Aristotle's argument, as opposed to the unquestionable
shrewdness of his observation. This is not to deny that both Else and
Rostagni may have raised points which illuminate the problem.
Most editors and commentators translate EV TCO (pocvepcp as 'on the
stage' and conclude that the examples are badly chosen, since they cover
only a few tragedies and leave the rest without illustration. Lucas, for
example, insists that EV TCO cpocvEpcp means 'on the stage' and accuses
Else of 'trying to evade the obvious meaning', reminding us of actual
pathe which take place on or close to the stage and submitting that they
are not so rare as to justify such an evasion. But even if we do accept
that EVTOcpavEpcp here means 'on the stage', we are bound to admit
that the list given by Lucas is a thin one and barely representative of
extant Greek tragedy: two deaths 'on the stage', two 'only just out of
sight', two characters in agony, three with their eyes put out, one with
a spike through his chest, one lying wounded, and one receiving a fatal
wound. The list, which already includes reference to a satyric drama,
Cyclops, and a tragedy known to us through its citation as an example
by Aristotle, The Wounded Odysseus, becomes even smaller if we insist
on the literal meaning 'on the stage', since actions close to the stage do
not strictly qualify on this interpretation. The conclusion must be that
pathe 'on the stage' are rare enough after all to justify Else and others
in doubting whether that is the sense in which we should take EV TCO
<pcxvEpco. We must also take issue with Lucas when he says that 'on the
stage' is the 'obvious meaning', since EV TCO cpccvEpco is surely not the
obvious way for Aristotle to render it in Greek: elsewhere he seems
happy enough with ETTI TTJS cncnvfjs,2 which Lucas compares with OTTO
b
TTJS oxrivfis in 52 i8, though he is doubtful as to the precise meaning of
oTcnvri in both passages. My own view would be that already by the fourth
century oxrivfi had come to bear its later sense of 'stage' and that this is
borne out by its use in this sense by Aristotle and by Demosthenes.3
Unless EV TCO (pctvEpco had acquired a technical sense by the fourth
century, its obvious meaning, pace Lucas, is not 'on the stage': it is
1
Aristotele, Poetica (Turin, 1944), 64.
2
S5 a 28; 59 b 25. 3
Ar. Pr. 922 b i7; Dem. xviii. 180.
'in sight', 'in the open', 'visibly'. But, it may be asked, what is the
difference for a theatre audience ? A great difference—for an Athenian
audience in the fifth or fourth century B.C., when so much of the dramatic
effect derived not from the visual but from the verbal presentation of
events, and so much of what we might call 'action' was imagined as
taking place off-stage and then reported to the audience. 'The treatment
of the area in front of skene as the single focal point to which characters
come, events are reported, and their results brought' is for Baldry1 an
example of the characteristic tendency of Greek tragedy to concentrate
the free imagination of the spectator on a single target. The phrase ev
TCO 9ocv£pcp might well indicate not so much that pathe so described were
physically localized on the stage as that they had by various means been
brought before the audience so that due account could be taken of them.
We all know what we mean when we say that a matter must be 'brought
into the open', and a similar use of the word <pccvepos elsewhere would seem
to support a less than literal rendering of the word in its present context.2
Lucas' insistence on rendering ev TCO <pocvepco as 'on the stage' appears
to cause him embarrassment at other points in his commentary. For
example, in a discussion of pathe in epic3 he writes that 'ev TCO <pavepco
"on the stage" has no application to narrative poetry'. Yet Aristotle is
saying in this passage that epic is like tragedy in that it has peripeteia,
anagnorisis, and pathos, and there is no indication that the same defini-
tion and illustrations do not apply. Again, in a note on TrccfrnTiKOtl
TpocycpSioci,4 Lucas comments that they are 'a somewhat limited class if
the TT&OOS were ev TCO cpccvspco, as apparently defined at 52 b n' and
concludes that to show the punishment of Ixion on a wheel ev TCO <pccvepco
'would surely have been beyond the resources of an Athenian stage-
manager'. But Aristotle does not define pathos as ev TCO 9ctvepco: he
illustrates his definition by examples which include 'deaths ev Tdp
9otvepco'. Too many translators and commentators fall into the trap of
taking Aristotle's olov as equal to 'viz.' instead of 'e.g.'.
In quoting these two passages from Lucas I have no intention of trying
to belittle the contribution of an editor to whom all students of the
Poetics are so indebted for the common sense and clarity with which he
has put the fruits of his mature and sane scholarship at our disposal:
rather my purpose is to suggest how near he may have been to a different,
and possibly more adequate, explanation. His hint that pathe ev TCO
(pavspcp may include those which take place close to the stage, his com-
parison of the pathe of epic with those related in the Messengers'
speeches of tragedy, his consciousness of the difficulties involved in the
1
H . C. Baldry, The Greek Tragic Theatre (London, 1971), 73.
2
e.g. in Xen. An. i. 3. 21 (with <&KOOCTOCI); Dem. xviii. 235 (with PouAaiEoflai).
3
Op. cit. 220. • Op. cit. 186.
visual presentation of pathos—all these seem to bring him closer to a
way of rendering and interpreting ev TCO cpocvEpco which I have so far
only dared to hint at. A note of Gudeman to which he refers1 may take
us a little further: 'thanatoi', Gudeman reminds us—and how many
keep on forgetting it!—'nicht nur Totungen sondern auch Todesfalle
vor den Augen der Zuschauer bezeichnet.' As an example of such
'instances of death before the eyes of the spectators' Gudeman then goes
on to mention the display of bodies by means of the ekkyklema, though
he fails to develop the possibilities as he might have done or to elaborate
the sense in which he takes EV TCO (pcxvepco. But what if pathe EV TCO
9CtV£pcp are taken to include deaths which take place off the stage or out
of sight of the audience and are then brought to its attention by the
ekkyklema ? And what if we then add to them the other examples given
by Aristotle—the 'agonies of pain', 'woundings', and the others referred
to as ocra TOIOOTOC which he does not specify here but which may fairly
be supplied from Rhet. ii. 9, in which Aristotle links with deaths (as
Trd0T| EAEEIVOC) aiKioci, acouoTcov KOCKCOCTEIS, yfjpas, voaoi, Tpocpfjs SVSEICC?
We find, I think, that Aristotle's examples are not so unrepresentative
as many have held them to be: they would certainly cover the pathe in
all the extant plays of Aeschylus for a start.
Reference has already been made to the attributive position of the
phrase EV TCO <pavEpco and to its limiting effect. There are two problems
here: does the phrase apply to thanatoi only or to all the examples cited,
and, if the former, what thanatoi, if the latter, what pathe, is it meant
to exclude ? On the one hand, it could be argued that there is no reason
why thanatoi should be differentiated from 'agonies of pain' and
'woundings' in this context, and that the omission of the phrase as an
attribute with 'agonies of pain' and 'woundings' would be normal Aris-
totelian practice and, in addition, perfectly good Greek. On the other
hand, the use of the ekkyklema for the representation of 'deaths' might
well be said to introduce a distinction, since it was clearly inappropriate
for the representation of 'agonies of pain' and 'woundings', and both
the repetition of the definite article with Tr£pico8uviai and the existence
of an alternative way of expressing the second part of the clause, if
intended to include EV TCO <pavEpco, suggest that linguistic arguments will
prove little in this passage. The decision is a difficult one but I incline
to the view that the attributive phrase should be limited to the noun
with which it is actually placed, i.e. Odvccroi, though I cannot profess to
be entirely happy about this.
But if it is so, what are the thanatoi which would not be covered by
the examples of EV TCO cpccvEpco ? Presumably those which are not visually
presented, for example, that of Oedipus in OT, which Aristotle identified
1
A. Gudeman, Aristoteles Poetik (Berlin, 1934), 227 f.
io PATHOS IN THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE
by implication as the murder of his father, an incident antecedent to the
plot, and those which are avoided, like the examples cited from Cres-
phontes, IT, and Helle and commended by Aristotle as the best kind of
pathe.1 Nor should we overlook in this connection Aristotle's careful
distinction between the use of 'spectacle' and the use of plot to arouse
pity and fear, so that, without actually seeing the incidents, one is moved
to pity and fear by simply hearing of them.2 This at once reminds us of
thanatoi which are brought to the notice of the audience by means of
speeches of messengers and other characters, since it would be unreason-
able to maintain that the deaths of Antigone or of Pentheus, for example,
were any less real to the audience for being recounted to them by an
observer instead of being enacted 'in the open'. It is, after all, a defect
of our own imagination and a legacy of later drama which leads us to
think that everything needs to be presented visibly in order to make an
impact on the audience: deaths unseen but told are just as much a part
of the plot of a Greek tragedy as those which are seen, and they are every
bit as real to the audience.
If we rule out the ingenious solutions proposed by Rostagni and Else,
as well as the possibility that Aristotle was writing utter nonsense at
this point, we are left with three approaches to this difficult clause. We
may narrow the scope of ev TCO <pocvepco by translating it as 'on the
stage'; by so doing we also narrow the possible application of the term
to a quite unrepresentative list of examples. We may attempt to widen
the scope of the phrase—and indeed of the clause—along the lines
which I have tentatively suggested. If neither of these alternatives is
acceptable, the only solution, if that is what it may be called, is to suppose
that either Aristotle or a later copyist has inserted the phrase ev TC£> <pocvepco
without proper consideration of the implications. Lucas has drawn
attention to the use in the scholia of evTO<pccvepco to mean 'on the stage';
but when we examine the passages cited in Gudeman's note to which
Lucas refers, we find that the actual phrase itself does not occur in any
of them, though several apparent equivalents do, and that the earliest
datable parallel quoted by Gudeman is the well-known dictum of
Horace,
ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet (AP 179),
which proves no more than that scenes of violence on the stage were
condemned by Horace. It must be admitted, therefore, that it would
have been possible for an early scribe to insert the phrase in this passage
of the Poetics because it had by his time become a commonplace of
1
54a4-9-
2
S3b3-7- 'Spectacle' must be understood as referring to the visual aspect of the
drama as a whole, which would for a Greek mainly be concerned with the appearance
otthe chorus and actors.
PATHOS IN THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE n
dramatic criticism and because he failed to appreciate the extent of the
damage he was doing to the sense. On these grounds sv TCO 9avspw
would certainly qualify for a place in an index expurgatorius for the
Poetics as strongly as many other phrases and passages which zealous
editors have thought worthy of excision—after all, the entire chapter
following this one was excised by most nineteenth-century editors and by
Butcher and Else for good measure. But no serious student of the Poetics
will want to rush to join the traditional game of removing embarrassing
passages as long as there is still a chance of explaining them.
5. The last question we posed, namely, the meaning of TTOCQTITIKOS as
applied to a particular kind of tragedy need not detain us for long:
Lucas' note on 55b32 provides an admirably clear discussion. It pathos
is an essential element in all tragedy, it would be unjustifiable to attempt
to limit it to a special and very restricted class, those tragedies which lay
special emphasis on pathos in the sense in which those concerned with,
for example, Ajax and Ixion might be so described—so-called 'tragedies
of suffering'. This use of the adjective has nothing to tell us relevant to
the present inquiry; like many other passages in the later chapters of
the Poetics, the two in which iraQriTiKO? appears suggest secondary ideas
which Aristotle rather inconsiderately introduced without ever develop-
ing them or making them consistent with earlier arguments. Here he
would seem to be combining two different aspects of tragedy, the one
concerned with plot and leading to division into simple and complex,
and the other introducing a division using the words pathos and ethos in
a more general and less technical sense than they have been given in
the Poetics, that is, tragedies in which suffering and differentiation of
character are more strongly emphasized. Hence both the Iliad and the
Odyssey are looked at in two different ways in the discussion of epic and
combine both aspects mentioned.
To sum up: pathos, the action bringing pain or destruction, is essential
to tragedy, whether it takes place or is avoided, whether it is seen or
imagined, whether it is an incident in the plot or one of its antecedents.
'The one thing absolutely essential to a tragedy was a pathos of heroic
quality and scope.'1 Its importance has been obscured by Aristotle's
personal preference for a complex plot containing peripeteia and ana-
gnorisis and by the anxiety of most critics to skip quickly over the
problems of a vague definition apparently inadequately illustrated.2
1
The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy, 88.
2
The first version of this paper was read to a seminar at the University of Manches-
ter, and a revised version at Trinity College, Dublin; the final version has greatly
benefited from comments made by members of the audience on these two occasions.
Despite my disagreement with Else and Lucas on certain points of detail it will be
apparent that I am greatly indebted to both for their treatment of pathos in their
commentaries.

Pathos in The Poetics of Aristotle: by B. R. Rees

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PATHOS IN THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE

T HE past thirty years have brought us much closer to the meaning

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