Tuna Deus ex Machina

Abstract

In the era of the Phoenicians, when large-scale tuna fisheries started to conquer human civilisation, the Greeks were the great storytellers of the Mediterranean. One famous technique in the Greek theatre was the deus ex machina (ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός): when the tragedy was unfolding in a rather predictable and thus boring way, the plot could suddenly change totally unexpectedly, sometimes against all logic, bringing a new dynamic to the storyline and refreshing the attention of the audience. A god might enter the stage to change the course of the story by some divine intervention. In modern language it was a ‘god from the machine’. (Aeschylus, writer of the The Persians where the invaders were slaughtered as if they were tuna, was famous for his use of deus ex machina. In the end it is all connected tuna).