The triumph of Greek culture was to achieve a synthesis between the two. Dionysus is the explosive, ungoverned force of creation, Apollo the power that channels that force into creative wonders. The Greeks were at once cruel and creative, brutal and innovative, physically savage and aesthetically sensitive. Abandon the brutality, Nietzsche suggests, and one foregoes the creativity. As the eponymous prophet puts it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ‘The greatest evil belongs to the greatest goodness: but that is creative.’
