Chapter 5 begins with griffins and gorgons, exploring the connections between wondrous objects and hybrids. Gorgons also prompt a discussion of gender and hybridity. This chapter juxtaposes the gorgon and other female demons who threaten mothers and children with the satyr, an exaggerated figure of the man identified by and with his penis. These matched exaggerations, by turns horrific and comic, illustrate the function of the hybrid as a projection of certain human anxieties: what if the man were no more than his erection? What if the woman were as dangerous as she is beautiful? What if a mother devoured her children instead of protecting them? Each caricature exists as a counterpoint to the ordinary men and women encountered in our daily lives, but in recognizing these alternatives the Greeks are also using the contrafactual to ask what exactly it means to be human. For this reason, transformation is a recurring theme in early Greek culture, with a wide range of applications from the stage to ritual initiation. Here too the cosmos is a space of entanglement. If a human shares some characteristic with an animal, does the divine also partake of this mutability?

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.

Eighteenth-century women writers excelled in the formal satiric style associated by contemporaries with the Roman poet Horace. While formal verse satire was especially fashionable in mid-century, two accomplished poets illustrate the rise and decline of this phenomenon. Anne Finch (1661–1720), writing at the beginning of the satiric vogue, professed to hate satire but incorporated corrective criticism into many poems; she wrote only one formal verse satire and kept it in manuscript. Anna Seward (1742–1809), who identified herself as a poet of sensibility, wrote satirically in prose but rarely produced formal satiric verse. Like Finch, Seward kept her sole formal satiric poem in manuscript until authorizing its posthumous publication. Finch exemplifies how a woman might hesitate to write in the Roman style because Restoration satire was a “masculine” poetic form associated with classical education, public affairs, and personal invective. Seward illustrates why a late-century poet might have moved away from formal verse satire despite a predilection for its tone and purpose. Both poets show how women readily adapted the poetic fashions of their lifetimes to suit their satiric purposes.

The panoramic reception of various literary genres in Aristophanic drama is discussed with reference to a specific play, Peace. Thematic and textual allusions to tragedy and earlier comedy are interwoven in connection to the central themes of this play: war and peace. The earlier part of the play, set in a world dominated by armed conflict, revolves around the parody of a quasi ‘trilogy’ of Euripidean tragedies (Aeolus, Stheneboea, and Bellerophontes) and contains further references to tragic passages or motifs of tragic dramaturgy. The latter part, which consists in the celebrations for the regained peace, parades a sequence of routines borrowed from rudimentary forms of comic entertainment, together with reminiscences of iambic poetry. The joys of peace are thus illustrated through a genealogy of the comic genre. The transition from the former to the latter world, through the pivotal scene of Peace’s liberation, is marked by a recast of the themes and stagecraft of satyr play. With its sequence of tragic trilogy, satyr play and assortment of comic materials, the Peace offers virtually the experience of a full festival of the Dionysia within the limits of a single dramatic script.