Excerpt from Plays of the Greek Dramatists: Selections From Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes Tragedy arose, Aristotle maintained, out of dithyramb - a hymn in praise of Dionysus-which was, occasionally, dramatic in character. However, Aristotle's contention is open to serious objections: formal-for the choruses of tragedy differ in number and arrangement from the choruses of the dithyramb; ety mologicalmfor tragedy is literally translated as goat song, and Aristotle does not supply the connection; and material - for tragedy is tragic, that is, it results in disaster, or, at any rate, a narrow escape from disaster. Many hypoth eses have been advanced to explain the derivation of tragedy; the one which appeals as most logical and most in harmony with our other data, is that of Dr. Parnell, as modified by Prof. Rose. The latter remarks: We know very little of early Attic ritual; but if we suppose that there existed some kind'of a rustic performance, connected with Dionysus himself, or possibly with some similar god of fertility whom on his coming to Attic he absorbed, we can easily imagine that it involved a contest in which the power of fertility was for some reason killed as deities of that kind very often are, to rise again with new vegetation of the next year, or the next crop of corn), or at least endangered by a formidable adversary (summer fighting for his life against Winter, pos The chorus, quite possibly, wore goat skins as a disguise, chosen be cause of the mythical lustiness and fertility of the he-goat: hence tragedy, or goat song. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.