ABSTRACT
Nowadays, the generally accepted theory behind the etymological meaning of tragedy has shifted from “song of the goat,” to “song for a goat.” Peter H. Burian tells us, try as he might, he can only discern five basic story lines in the canon of extant Greek tragedy. The basic pedagogical rationale behind starting with the chorus is that, after this, everything else about Greek tragedy should seem easy. In the beginning, long before there was tragedy, there was the chorus. Upon closer inspection, one might be inclined to think of Greek tragedy as something akin to Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together by so many disparate and conflicting Greek pastimes: singing, dancing, Homer, and the love of a good rhetorical debate. Such a seismic shift in the understanding of the word tragedy is a good example of the wide array of other competing speculations that are engendered by the most elliptical of art forms.
