Why is Greece a "he-goat"?

In Daniel 8, Daniel sees Persia falling at the hands of the Greek Empire. Persia is symbolized by a ram (the two horns representing Persia and Medea) and Greece by a "tzfir-izzim", which apparently means a "he-goat" (se'ir).

Turns out, certainly the last part about the tzfir, is a fascinating bit of symbolism.

In Efraim Tzoref's book "Yosef, Viceroy to the King of Egypt", Vol. 1, pg. 177, while discussing symbolism in dreams, he writes (translation from Hebrew):

"Plutarch (Hadrian's teacher from the 2nd century CE) recounted: When Alexander the Great (from the 4th century BCE) laid siege upon the walls of Tyre and was not able to conquer them for a long time, he lost hope and decided to withdraw. That night he saw in his dream a satyr dancing before him victoriously. In the morning, Aristander, his dream-interpreter, interpreted the dream for him, that he would indeed manage to defeat Tyre, as the word satyr is comprised of Sa - yours and Tyros - Tyre, meaning, you have received a message from the space of infinity that you shall capture Tyre. And it was so."

A satyr in Hebrew is a se'ir, or a he-goat, as satyrs were typically male. Amazing!

We find that Greece was symbolized by a he-goat in Daniel because they viewed themselves as he-goats. More specifically, the symbol of victory in the mind of the Greek leader at the time, Alexander, was none other than the he-goat (albeit a mythological version of it)!


(image taken from here)

P.S. I suppose that technically the title is a bit of a misnomer because we don't actually know why the Greeks (or perhaps, the Macedonians) chose a goat or goat-like creature to symbolize them. It's kind of the same problem I have with figuring out name-meanings. Random example: The name Avigedor comes from Avi (father of) and Gedor (a place). That's great, but what does "Gedor" mean? And we're stuck...

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