THE BASIC WEAKNESS Of ancient criticism is that the critics, rhetorically trained when they were not themselves teachers of rhetoric, concentrated all their attention on stylistic matters, often minutiae. On this subject they are often interesting, but they say very little on the essential nature and qualities of the genre, even of the author they are discussing. They are apt to treat literature as a storehouse of quotations to support their theories. The great exception is of course Aristotle, who in the Poetics deals with the essential nature of tragedy and, to a lesser extent, of comedy. His side comments on other genres, however, where he compares them to tragedy, are much less satisfying. This is particularly true of historiography. Two passages in the Poetics deal with it briefly. In the first (1451 b 1) he says: