It’s clear from what we’ve said that the role of a poet is not to say what has happened but what could happen, within the bounds of probability or necessity. The difference between a historian and a poet is not that one uses prose and the other verse. After all, you could take the History of Herodotus and turn it into verse, but it would still be history, not poetry. The historian tells us what has happened, the poet what could happen.
This is why poetry is more like philosophy and is more important than history. Poetry is about universals, while history is about particulars. A universal is what people would probably or necessarily say or do in a certain situation. Poetry does this even when it attaches a real name to a character, but history deals strictly with the actions or experiences of a particular person, like Alcibiades.
This is obvious in comedy as well. A comic writer first constructs a plot on the basis of probabilities, then makes up names for the characters. Comic poets don’t write about real people like lampoonists or satirists do.
