We have referred elsewhere to Aristotle’s pronouncement in his Poetics on the role of the chorus in tragedy: ‘the chorus must be regarded as one of the actors; being part of the whole, it should take part in the action (sunagonízesthai), not as in Euripides, but as in Sophocles’. In the wake of this famous normative statement it is often said that the chorus of Euripides’ tragedies no longer played the central role it had played in those of Sophocles. According to Aristotle the tragic poet Agathon had been the first to turn the chorus’ interventions into mere musical intermezzos or embólima, and many have ascribed the same tendency to Euripides. If there is one play of Euripides that does not justify this belief it is his second Hippolytus. This play shows the master tragedian at the apex of his poetic career.

Starting from the respective onomastic landscapes of Dionysos and Poseidon, this chapter draws portraits of each god before comparing them. Indeed, as far as divine onomastics, and especially cult epithets, are concerned, points of convergence can be investigated, such as fishing or plant-growing. On the other hand, oppositions are even more representative of the situation of each god in structuring axes of ancient Greek Weltanschauung: Poseidon seems to be very ‘male’ while Dionysos is definitely more mobile between genders; and while the former is deeply rooted in stability and ‘holding together’, the latter makes waves and ‘loosens’. As other deities in a polytheistic system, what distinguishes these two gods is not so much a space (the sea, for example or a domain (such as that of vegetation) as the way in which they invest it. In other words, gods and goddesses of ancient polytheisms can be better understood when looking at their relations with and situations vis-à-vis each other.

Chapter five focuses upon scenes of revels in which Dionysos is surrounded by the musical and danced performances of satyrs and maenads, the mythical beings who accompany him. Dionysos exhibits a distinct kind of musicality: unlike the other gods, Dionysos rarely plays an instrument himself. Rather, he acts as the source of inspiration for satyrs and maenads, prompting them to play their instruments, dance to the wild music they produce, and lose themselves, collectively, to the ecstatic sounds that envelop them. The movements of the satyrs and maenads also communicate to the external viewers how they might experience Dionysos’ presence. Within the symposium, ancient viewers created the opportunity for Dionysos to manifest when they consumed wine from the vases, looked at the representations of mythical revels, listened to music performed on similar instruments, and moved their bodies in response to the music they both saw and heard. Such immersive and imaginative seeing and hearing thus allowed the symposiasts to join in the divine revel, where, under the influence of Dionysos, they played instruments and danced with satyrs and maenads.

Chapter 6 describes the construction of the unified inner self and its relation to the universe. A movement from diversity (inner, cosmic and political) to wholeness is found in the mythic-ritual complex of both cultures, notably in the strikingly similar myths of Prajapati and Dionysos. The wholeness of the inner self correlates with the wholeness of the world obtained by sacrifice. The formation of the unified inner self (atman) as cosmogony is described in the opening of the B?hadara?yaka Upani?ad. The relation of atman to other candidates for the role of unified inner self, prana and manas, is described.