Meaning of Sentence with unusual construction?

Question

I came across this sentence:

The consensus was that here was a drama truly reflecting an early stage in die evolution of tragedy out of choral lyric.

Adding context:

Modern archaeological finds can still contribute much to the study of ancient literature. For example, forty years ago a survey of the early Greek dramatist Aeschylus’ plays would have started with The Suppliant Women. Many factors internal to the play, but perhaps most especially the prominence of the chorus (which in this play has the main role), led scholars to consider it one of Aeschylus’ earlier works. The consensus was that here was a drama truly reflecting an early stage in die evolution of tragedy out of choral lyric. The play was dated as early as the 490’s B.C., in any event, well before Aeschylus’ play The Persians of 472 B.C.

Several constructs in sentence are confusing to me. Could someone explain what this sentence means? (or was it misprinted and I am wasting my time trying to over-analyze it?)

(In particular, "die evolution", "tragedy out of choral lyric" etc. are confusing to me)

Based on comments, I now believe that "die evolution" was misprinted/ had typo and referred to "the evolution".

Answer 1

It was at one time widely held, on the authority of Aristotle's Poetics^† that tragedy originated in a form of choral song called dithyramb, through dialogue between the chorus and its leader—who thereby became the first actor, representing a single individual. The Poetics also claims that the playwright Aeschylus was the first to introduce a second actor and to shift the dramatic emphasis from dialogue between an actor and the chorus to dialogue between two actors.

In Aeschylus' Suppliants the chorus has the "leading role" and almost all the dialogue takes place between single actors and the chorus rather than between two actors. This fit so neatly with the historical scheme described in the Poetics that the scholarly consensus held that the Suppliants was one of Aeschylus' earliest plays, written probably in the 470s BC, before he had fully developed his innovation.

That is what your sentence describes: tragedy evolved out of choral lyric, and the play reflects an early stage in that evolution.

In 1952, however, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256 was published, which seemed to imply^‡ that the play was written much later, perhaps in 463 BC. This is what the remainder of your reading discusses.

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^† I have to express this very hedgingly, because everything about the origins of Greek drams is controversial; the Poetics, for instance, is not a 'finished' work but very elliptical (it has been suggested that it is in fact a set of lecture notes), and there are today very grave doubts about whether Aristotle was in a position to know much about this aspect of his subject.

^‡Again, we're dealing with ambiguous evidence. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a huge mass of papyrus fragments, many (such as 2256) so small that their sense has to be teased out by inference.