Poetics is the earliest known work that develops a theory of drama and related literary forms. His term poetics encompasses lyric and epic poetry as well as drama in its major forms of comedy, tragedy and what was called the satyr play. All literary forms are “imitations of life” but can be broken into genres by defining attributes that differ in three ways: differences in music rhythm, meter, harmony and melody; differences in the goodness of the characters; and differences in how the narrative is presented, either acted out or told. The original work was divided into two books, each on a separate scroll, and only the first book survives. The first book is focused on tragedy and epic poetry and is divided into five sections. After an opening discourse on tragedy, epic poetry and comedy, he defines tragedy and sets forth rules for the proper construction of a tragedy in the second part. The third section delves into definition and analysis of the qualitative parts, the fourth discusses common criticisms and responses, and the fifth argues for tragedy as the superior form. Given the weight given to tragedy in the first book, scholars speculate that the lost second book likely treated comedy with a similar depth. The work was lost for centuries and found its way back to the Western world though a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. It has been part of a classical education in the Western tradition and has been subject to an ongoing diversity of opinions.