in Dramatic Poetry, the fourth and last part in the ancient drama, or that immediately succeeding the catastasis, or, according to others, the third only, the whole drama being divided into protasis, epistas, and catastrophe, or, in the language of Aristotle, prologue, epilogue, and exode. The catastrophe clears up every thing, and is nothing else but the discovery or winding up of the plot. It has its peculiar place, for it ought to be entirely contained, not only in the last act, but in the very conclusion of it; and, when the plot is finished, the play should be so likewise.