For there is no on term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratibsp;dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetibsp;imitations in iambibsp;elegiabsp;or any similar metre.
People do, indeed, add the word ''maker'' or ''poet'' to the name of the metre, and speak of elegiabsp;poets, or epibsp;(that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the ver that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name.
Even when a treati on medie or natural sbsp;is brought out in ver, the name of poet is by given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in on but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet.
On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetibsp;imitation were to bine all metres, as Chaeremon did in his taur, whibsp;is a medley pod of metres of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet.
So mubsp;then for the distins.
There are, again, some arts whibsp;employ all the means above mentioned, namely, rhythm, tune, and metre.
Subsp;are Dithyrambibsp;and Nomibsp;poetry, and also Tragedy and edy; but between them the differenbsp;is, that in the first two bsp;the means are all employed in bination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now another.
Subsp;then, are the differenbsp;of the arts with respebsp;to the medium of imitation.