Hamartia [error] . . .

"Hamartia [error] is the failing in understanding or moral character which leads someone to a disasterous choice of action: a choice which arouses our pity because it is both catastrophic and made deliberately but not out of wickedness, and arouses our terror because we identify with both the innocence and the helplessness of the person who makes the choice."

. . . Translator's insertion (Kenneth McLeish) within Aristotle's Poetics . . . 350 B.C.E. . . . page 17