text: The characters in a tragedy are merely a means of driving the story; and the plot, not the characters, is the chief focus of tragedy.Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity and fear, and is meant to effect the catharsis of those same emotions.Aristotle concludes Poetics with a discussion on which, if either, is superior: epic or tragic mimesis.He suggests that because tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as spectacle and music, is more unified, and achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it can be considered superior to epic.Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had a special interest in the riddles of the Delphic Oracle and studied the fables of Aesop.Transmission More than 2300 years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived.He contributed to almost every field of human knowledge then in existence, and he was the founder of many new fields.According to the philosopher Bryan Magee, "it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did".Among countless other achievements, Aristotle was the founder of formal logic, pioneered the study of zoology, and left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific method.Taneli Kukkonen, observes that his achievement in founding two sciences is unmatched, and his reach in influencing "every branch of intellectual enterprise" including Western ethical and political theory, theology, rhetoric, and literary analysis is equally long.As a result, Kukkonen argues, any analysis of reality today "will almost certainly carry Aristotelian overtones ...evidence of an exceptionally forceful mind." Jonathan Barnes wrote that "an account of Aristotle's intellectual afterlife would be little less than a history of European thought".