1 Euripides' Iphigeneia in Tauris—Orestes and Pylades arriving among the Tauri are by the custom of the country to be sacrificed to Artemis by her priestess, Iphigeneia. It is agreed that Pylades shall be spared to carry a letter from Iphigeneia to Orestes, whom she supposes to be in Argos. In order that Pylades may deliver the message, even if he should lose the letter, she reads it aloud. Orestes thus discovers who she is. He then reveals himself to her by declaring who he is and proving his identity by his memories of their home.
2 In chapter 6.
3 This does not apply to surviving Greek tragedies, but may be true of those of Aristotle's time. The word Stasimon is applied to all choruses in a tragedy other than those sung during entry or exit. It is usually explained as meaning a "stationary song," because it was sung after the chorus had taken up its "station" in the orchestra.
4 The whole of chapter 12. bears marks of belonging to the Poetics but seems out of place, since it interrupts the discussion of "plot."
5 See chapter 10.
6 i.e., our preference for "poetic justice."
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.