Talk:Wine Wars: The Deus in the Machina/@comment-37865465-20181229121555

The phrase "deus ex machina" is Latin and it is the translation of the Greek phrase "Apo mihanis theos" and as others have pointed out in English it is translated as “God from the machine”. It refers in a mechanism that was used in ancient Greek theater.

The sort version of the story behind the phrase is this. In ancient tragedies the plot would often reach a point were no apparent solution would be visible, in this cases one of the gods would appear in the stage and his divine intervention would give the solution. The actor who played the god would be lowered to the stage from above, with the use of some mechanism e.g. a crane. As a result the phrase “God from a machine” was created in Greek and Latin and was used in cases when difficult problem was solved without much effort thanks to some unexpected help.