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a.

Comes the Greek words tragos ‘goat’ and oide ‘song’

b.

No-one knows why!

c.

Some believe that it was because the first tragedies were performed in honour of Dionysus who was associated with goats.

d.

Could also be that the best playwright got a goat as a prize.

Hi, everyone. And welcome back to one of your favorite segments【词源考古研究所】, in English we call it 【It means what? 】

Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.

So in this segment, 安澜 and I are going to get to the bottom of some of the everyday words or phrases and tell you about the origin stories.

Yes. I know you like drama Lulu.

Are you calling me a drama queen?

A little bit, yes. So today's word is tragedy.

Tragedy悲剧. Let me guess Greek.

Yes.

Because they were the ones who had all these amphitheaters and had all these drama performance, right?

Yes. The whole idea of tragedy, comedy, in western civilization comes from ancient Greece, and it all started as a religious festival and ancient Greek tragedy came from a festival in honor of Dionysus.

Dionysus, this is just Bacchus, isn't it?  就是古希腊古罗马的酒神叫Dionysus in Greek and Bacchus in Roman times.

Exactly. So tragedy the word literally means “goat song”.

Goat?

Goat as in the animal goat.

山羊之歌.

‘Tragos’ means  ‘goat’. ‘Oide’ means ‘song’. So literally, goat song.

I'm sorry, I'm completely lost. What does that have to do with Dionysus or with theater performance?

The thing is that no one really knows. There's a theory that a goat was given as a prize for the best performance, Okay. Or that the early performers wore goat skins， or goats were associated with Dionysus.

Can you imagine nowadays it goes ‘The Oscar goes to... ’and here's your goat.

Pretty much. Let's face it, a goat is probably more useful than a little statue. So these plays were actually performed as part of a religious ritual.

So tragedy was performed as part of religious ritual .

Yeah, and also comedy as well. So in ancient Greek theater, you had comedy and tragedy that's all you had, but ancient Greek tragedy was I would say it seems simple. So you only had about three actors and then you had the chorus.

The singers?

The singers or just sort of the backup. So they would actually be sort of narrating what is happening. And the actors would be using masks to show who they are.

Yeah, the masks, I think, in quite a few ancient forms of drama of theatrical performance, there's the use of mask, but it's not just theatrical performance, actually come to think about it, there's also the religious element, the spiritual element of it.

So they were telling stories from Greek myth, and lots of these stories have actually unfortunately been lost. But some of the most famous plays in western civilization, western literature come from three main people, 埃斯库罗斯（Aeschylus）、索福克勒斯（Sophocles）和欧里庇得斯（Euripides）.

Yeah, and they all wrote tragedies?

They all wrote tragedies. Some of them actually wrote comedies, but we don't know anymore.

I think that tragedies tend to be more long lasting.

Well, they're the ones that survived. So Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex, the Oedipus complex (恋母情节).

俄狄浦斯的就是恋母情结的故事, 什么弑父娶母kill the father, marry the mother that story.

By the way, because I also teach like Shakespearean plays, so tracing back to Greek times, the whole Greek traditions, for example, like tragic hero所谓的悲剧英雄is basically a hero who is got a lot of good attributes but got one fatal flaw, like Macbeth, like Othello.

Yeah, now this is also from Greek tragedy. The idea of Hubris.

Hubris.

Yeah, so Hubris is excessive pride or arrogance.

So the whole idea, like I said about the tragic hero. I was wondering, 安澜 , if you were in that role, if you were the tragic hero, what would be your fatal flaw?

Probably coffee.

Okay.

I really need a coffee.

Yeah, so coffee is your vice, is your fatal flaw.

What about yours?

I think it's just me being too perfect?

So that is a good example of Hubris.

对, 自大吧, but actually no. I would probably say, I don't know, maybe insecurity about human relations.

Okay.

But all in all, would you say that you prefer tragedies or comedies when it comes to plays or drama?

I prefer comedies. I actually studied Greek theatre, and the Greek tragedies are amazingly good. The stories are still so so relevant. They're still really, really good. They've been adapted so many times.

That's why you don't like them. You prefer comedies?

Because Greek tragedies are very very heavy. They're very dark.

I think this is why I'm drawn to tragedies. Comedies they always feel a little bit too light-hearted for me, they seem to be not serious enough. I think this is also why perhaps the whole tragic traditions they survived more so than the comedies from the Greek time.

I would say that in the Greek time, tragedy was seen as more serious, there are still quite a few comedies from ancient Greece and maybe you could talk about that in another episode.

Yeah. And I think on that note, we're gonna wrap up this episode. Leave us a comment in the comment section, tell us which is your favorite, comedies or tragedies? or maybe which is your favorite tragedy?

So until next time.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.