Quantitative parts of tragedy

Having treated the qualitative parts of tragedy — the six elements with plot at their head — Aristotle turns briefly to the quantitative parts: the separate sections into which a Greek tragedy is actually divided in performance. These are: the Prologue (everything before the first choral entrance), the Episode (the sections between complete choral songs), the Exode (everything after the last choral song), and the Choric song, which divides into the Parode (the first choral entrance and song) and the Stasimon (subsequent choral songs without dialogue).

Some tragedies also include the Kommos — a lyric lamentation sung jointly by the Chorus and one or more actors from the stage. This chapter is structural anatomy rather than normative criticism; it names the formal conventions of the genre that any Athenian audience member would have recognised from regular attendance at the City Dionysia. The chapter is thought by most scholars to be either an interpolation or an addition made by a later editor, since it does not integrate naturally with the surrounding argument.