Dear Friends,
This month's Hard Taco song, "Giant Friendly Waves," is a sweet, nostalgic lullaby, sung from a child to his toy boats.
Happy Big 2-5-0-0!
Ancient Greek Tragedy is reaching an important milestone this year. Persians, the earliest surviving play by Aeschylus (525-456 BCE), is turning 2500. Persians was the first play to feature two characters talking to each other. Without it, we'd probably be stuck watching garbage like Romeo and Chorus, Butch Cassidy and Chorus, or Bill and Chorus's Excellent Adventure.
If Aeschylus was the Father of Greek Tragedy, Sophocles (497-406 BCE) was the Other Father of Greek Tragedy.
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| If you've got a problem with this, get your narrow-minded ass out of Athens. |
Sophocles moved the art-form forward even further by adding a controversial third player to the stage. You know that scene where Oedipus tries to break up a fight between his wife and his mom? Good luck staging that with just two actors!
Euripides (480-406 BCE) was the youngest of the great Athenian tragedians. He continued the trend by adding a fourth actor to the stage in his play Medea's Big Happy Family. His works were characterized by emotional realism and strong, complex female characters, and served as the inspiration for the Schick Quattro, the first disposable razor with four blades.
Inexplicably, Euripides's plays were not just written in Greek, but they were written entirely with Greek letters. Weird flex, but okay. Here is an excerpt from The Trojan Women:
Beta: Pi Delta.
Delta: Rho Mu? Alpha Beta.
Gamma/pi: Tau iota!
Obviously, it's hard to follow in the original Greek, but translating to English is as simple as changing one letter in each word.
Beth: Hi Delia.
Delia: Who, me? Aloha, Beth.
Mamma/Pa: Tax Iowa!
Using this same translation method, it is clear that in Electra, the main character's famous plea to Clytemnestra, "Upsilon Epsilon," actually translates to "Epsilon Upsilon." Suddenly, the Peloponnesian War makes perfect sense.
With warmest regards,
Zach
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