** spoiler alert ** Some random thoughts:

I was halfway through the play before I realized that OEnone is the Greek equivalent of Wenona. Weird.

As the God of horses, Poseidon would necessarily be blamed for any horse-related death, especially one in which the rider loses control of the horses. This made Theramenes's description of the divine water monster appear almost as a grief-induced delusion, product of a desire to justify blaming Hippolytus's death on Poseidon.

Now I see what Proust's protagonist (in In Search of Lost Time) was so obsessed about. By making his narrator obsess about Phaedre, Proust is able to add a lot of depth to his character with very few words. Given that love in Phaedre is largely portrayed as an affliction, Proust's reference indicates that his narrator will later be prone to extreme lovesickness.