...nothing is lacking but the soul of the feigned things, and in each body is the integrity of that part which can be shown by a single aspect. Which would be a long and most tedious thing for poetry: to recount all the movements of the operators of such a war, and the parts of the limbs and their ornaments — which things painting, finished with great brevity and truth, sets before you; and to this demonstration nothing is lacking but the noise of the machines and the shouts of the frightening victors and the cries and weeping of the terrified. Which things, again, the poet cannot represent to the sense of hearing. We shall say therefore that poetry is a science that supremely operates upon the blind, and painting does the same upon the deaf; but painting remains the worthier by as much as it serves a better sense.

The only true office of the poet is to feign words of people who speak together, and only these does he represent to the sense of hearing as natural, because in themselves they are natural, created by the human voice; and in all other consequences he is surpassed by the painter.

But far more, beyond comparison, are the varieties to which painting extends than those to which words extend, because the painter will make infinite things which words will not be able to name, for want of vocabulary appropriate to them. Now do you not see that if the painter wishes to feign animals, or devils in hell, with what abundance of invention he runs through them?

[15a] Who is he who would not sooner lose hearing and smell and touch than sight? For he who loses si-