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Giorgio Agamben examines biopolitics from a historical perspective dating back to Ancient Greece and, unlike Foucoult, considers the violence and oppression of the sovereign power as a policy that develops strategies that legitimize it. It is also possible to see how the authoritative includes the biological existence of man in his own politics and the dilemmas created by this, in the tragedies that frequently express the conflict between legal-political life and natural life. Among the three great tragedian writers, Euripides provides an opportunity to read through contemporary political relations in that he writes realistic and extraordinary works in terms of both content and form, and uses an unsettling and critical style instead of suggesting moderation. This study investigates the reflections of biopolitics in Ancient Greek tragedies in order to expand the field of political thought in tragedies and to make anachronistic aspects of biopolitics visible, and tries to find the equivalent of Agamben's determinations on biopolitics in Euripides's Bacchas. Bacchas, like Sophocles' Antigone, place the unjust domination of state law over bare life and the violence mechanism of the sovereign power in the tense conflict between the natural order and the social order. With such a reading, Pentheus and Dionysus assume the semantic counterpart of the dominant power and homo sacer figure and 'Bios' and 'Zoe'.

This paper will co-examine Euripides' ancient tragedy The Bacchae and Charles Mee's modern (re)making, The Bacchae 2.1. Mee – who is constantly inspired by the Greeks and repeatedly states that "there is no such thing as an original play" – keeps the myth and characters of the classic drama virtually unchanged, leaving their words to express the differences. Although the lines of Euripides are often repeated verbatim, they are uttered in a different context and setting, with pieces of the modern world invading the ancient text, in an attempt to show the individual's pain and suffering. In both plays, the different boundaries with which people attempt to gain control of the world around them are challenged and eventually shattered. In contrast to Euripides' world, however, where harmony is – even briefly – a possibility, Mee's is vulgar and bizarre, explicitly violent and sexually obscene; shaped by the prevalent culture rather than the deities to whom the ancients believed, the modern playwright's heroes stand alone in their effort to survive and find meaning. It is the aim of this paper to show how both playwrights place the question of social and personal identity - through the contrast between private and public realms - at the heart of their works, how they repeatedly point out the dangers of state politics interfering with the freedom and beliefs of its citizens and create plays about the challenge of authority. Common themes to be examined include violence, abuse of power, denial of responsibility, self-delusion and awareness, subconscious drives and suppressed behavior, miscommunication.

Euripides' Bacchae is one of the most intensively studied Greek tragedies. Generations of scholars have explored the play from different perspectives and offered fascinating insights. But there are still aspects that have not received the attention they deserve. One such aspect is Euripides' use of libation as a dramatic motif. Even though this motif relates directly to the question of the tragic conflict between Dionysus and Pentheus, it has never been discussed in detail and its dramatic impact has not been fully acknowledged.

Liberalism begins with the free individual; the liberal state comes into being in order to preserve that freedom. Part of that freedom, to use the language of John Stuart Mill, is choosing one's own life plan, escaping the forms and lifestyles imposed on us by history or nature. Two texts from ancient Athens—Euripides'Bacchaeand Plato'sRepublic—explore the challenge posed by what I call "the escape from form." TheBacchae, while capturing our longing for a freedom from form, portrays the devastation of a city invaded by just that freedom; theRepublic, while capturing the epistemological and political need for form, portrays a frightening vision of a city so bound by form that it becomes immobile. Socrates' self-critique in his reconsideration of the artisan inRepublic10, however, unites the forms his Callipolis demands with the multiplicity of human identities that the god Dionysus brings to Thebes in Euripides' tragedy.

Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides and Toni Morrison's Beloved present the reader with a slave population that was uprooted and deported. Both works teem with punished bodies. Institutionalized slavery, as a condition, prevents the slaves from a bundle of rights, and the slave body is defined by its utility to the process of slave labor. Labor is performed under condition of bondage. Working on the plantation or in the mine constitutes the justification of the suffering experienced by the slaves. Pain becomes the foundation for resistance. Rebellion, as an expression of collective will, is triggered by the slaves' awareness of their enslavement. Both writers beautify pain and seem to suggest that the world had to be made anew by those coming out of slavery. The promise of a new life is present in the regenerating powers of vegetation.

This paper is a summary of Wole Soyinka's Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, a Nigerian dramatic rewriting from Euripides'Bacchae. This analysis which identifies the similarities and the inconsistencies between the ancient Greek myths and gods and the Yoruba cosmogony and rituals, will focus on the idea of drama as an ideal medium for social and political expression within a postcolonial space. The following aspects of Soyinka's Bacchae will be taken under consideration: the relationship between the classical prototype and its Yoruba version (the re-contextualization of time, space and characters; the similarities and the inconsistencies between the ancient Greek myths and gods and the Yoruba cosmogony and folklore); the cultural and metaphysical syncretism; third and last, the metamorphosis of the myth's identity, that is, the deconstruction of traditional western canons and themes replaced by precolonial rituals. The result is a syncretic theatre.

This article argues that the Greek idea of sparagmos (tearing apart) offers an illuminating metaphor to describe creative artists' engagement with antiquity. The violence and fertility innate within sparagmos are particularly appropriate to postcolonial receptions of classical literature, as will be demonstrated by examining Toni Morrison's novel, Sula, and Wole Soyinka's play, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, both published in 1973. While the latter proclaims its debt to antiquity in the title, the former plays a more elusive game by engaging with a number of ancient Greek texts (none explicitly), before going on to defy our classically-infused expectations. Sula's primary classical antecedent is Sophocles' Ajax, but that tragedy is ripped apart and its dismembered remains scattered throughout the novel before being 're-membered' in a form of compositio membrorum (gathering together of limbs). Soyinka's engagement with Greek tragedy is more direct, and the sparagmos is seen not so much in his approach to classical literature as in the action of the play, as well as in his critique of Nigeria's contemporary political scene. Together, these two case-studies demonstrate the potential inherent in the trope of sparagmos as a metaphor for classical reception, particularly in the sphere of postcolonial literature.

This article argues that the Greek idea of sparagmos (tearing apart) offers an illuminating metaphor to describe creative artists' engagement with antiquity. The violence and fertility innate within sparagmos are particularly appropriate to postcolonial receptions of classical literature, as will be demonstrated by examining Toni Morrison's novel, Sula, and Wole Soyinka's play, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, both published in 1973. While the latter proclaims its debt to antiquity in the title, the former plays a more elusive game by engaging with a number of ancient Greek texts (none explicitly), before going on to defy our classically-infused expectations. Sula's primary classical antecedent is Sophocles' Ajax, but that tragedy is ripped apart and its dismembered remains scattered throughout the novel before being 're-membered' in a form of compositio membrorum (gathering together of limbs). Soyinka's engagement with Greek tragedy is more direct, and the sparagmos is seen not so much in his approach to classical literature as in the action of the play, as well as in his critique of Nigeria's contemporary political scene. Together, these two case-studies demonstrate the potential inherent in the trope of sparagmos as a metaphor for classical reception, particularly in the sphere of postcolonial literature.

The aim of this article is to show how the Italian translation produced by F. Lamioni of The Bacchae of Euripides by the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, manipulates the source text thus projecting a different image of it. Starting with an overview of the rewritings of Greek classics by African authors and the ideological motivations of such rewritings, in particular the political agenda underlying Soyinka's adaptation of Euripides' tragedy, the article then focuses in particular on three terms – bastardy, alien and tyranny – taken from Dionysos' initial speech. These terms are central to the message the Author intends to convey since they present the main themes of the work, yet, in the Italian version by Lamioni are inappropriately translated, thus conveying a message which is rather different from Soyinka's original work, and censoring the ideological reasons implied in his adaptation of Euripides' tragedy.

The defeat at Carrhae is usually seen as a turning point of the Roman imperialism. But this is a view of the modern historiography. For the Latin historiography of the period the defeat was primarily a pretext to justify next military or quasi-military actions. This is why Latin-writing authors stressed a motif of revenge. It is especially manifest when descriptions of M. Licinius Crassus' death are concerned. Although the earliest reports on the matter have not survived to our time, thanks to indirect or direct mentions it is possible to reconstruct the narrations about Crassus' death. The Latin versions stressed Parthian brutality and deceit, while paying less attention to the triumvir himself – and it was a justifiable step – and Crassus' lost. This is the main reason to describe him as a careless general. Too accurate depiction was not necessary and undesirable. Crassus died during a retreat, after his soldiers mutinied, cheated by the Parthians, having no time and opportunity to deliver any last words or perform any symbolic gesture. It was not a dignified death of a Roman politician, leader or a Roman. The Greek view was more different. Some of the authors of course shared the Roman view, but the other developed a story of a post-mortem fate of Crassus. This motive was known to the Latin readers as well and in the 4th century A.D. developed into a moralizing narration about punished greed. What is more surprising, within this trend Crassus had been brought to life: he suffered mors aurata alive! The late antique authors just reworked an element of the narration present already in the Livian version. ; Pogrom rzymskich legii w bitwie pod Karrami (Carrhae) jest zazwyczaj postrzegany jako punkt zwrotny rzymskiego imperializmu. Jest to jednak pogląd nowożytny. Z punktu widzenia historiografii łacińskiej narracja o porażce służyła przede wszystkim uzasadnianiu kolejnych antypartyjskich posunięć militarnych lub dyplomatycznych. Z tego powodu łacińscy autorzy na plan pierwszy wysunęli temat zemsty. Co prawda najstarsze przekazy o bitwie i śmierci M. Licyniusza Krassusa (M. Licinius Crassus) nie zachowały się, ale na podstawie późniejszych informacji można zrekonstruować kierunki rozwoju narracji o zgonie triumwira i podstawowych czynnikach kształtujących ją. Wersje łacińskie podkreślały partyjską brutalność i podstępność mniej koncentrując się na osobie triumwira i porażce. Zbyt dokładna relacja nie była wskazana. Kładziono nacisk na wszelkie potknięcia Krassusa jako wodza, czyniąc go w ten sposób odpowiedzialnym za klęskę. Był to standardowy wybieg w przypadku narracji o militarnych niepowodzeniach. Krassus zmarł w sposób mało godny, nie pozostawiając po sobie żadnych ostatnich słów, nie zdobywając się na żaden symboliczny gest. Co gorsza, zginął podczas odwrotu. Greckie przekazy były nieco inne. Część podzielała wersje rzymskie i rzymski punkt widzenia. Podkreślano natomiast losy szczątków zabitego Rzymianina – zwłaszcza jego odciętej głowy. Najprawdopodobniej już Liwiusz znał opowieść o wkładaniu w usta odciętej głowy złota, ale moralizatorskie przesłanie tej sceny zostało rozwinięte nieco później przez autorów łacińskich i greckich i przyniosło około IV w. informację o Krassusie wziętym do niewoli żywcem, któremu dopiero później wlano do ust stopione złoto.

International audience Since the beginning of the sixties of the last century, several philologists have studied the presence of significant parallels between the representation of Dionysus offered by Euripides' Bacchae and that which is at the heart of Aristophanes' Frogs,, parallels that the relative chronology of these two plays has undoubtedly helped to underline. These data have been interpreted in different ways, being most often put on the account of the myth to which the two plays refer or of the comic parody of the tragedy. I propose to reconstruct the main stages of this debate, while making my own contribution. My hypothesis is that the parallels identified by the researchers are to be understood within the framework of an inter-generic poetic rivalry between Euripides and Aristophanes. In this perspective, the fact that Dionysus is the protagonist of both plays cannot be dissociated from his function as representative of two antagonistic conceptions of theater. These are expressed in particular by means of transvestism in the initiatory scenarios that conclude the Bacchae and open the Frogs.

This essay explores Soyinka's social, political and cultural concerns taking as point of departure his exploration of the role of myth in Yoruba culture and its repercussions in contemporary Nigerian society. In his rewriting of Euripides' best known tragedy, Bacchae, Soyinka reflects on the impact of the colonial process and on the role of modernday dictatorship in many Third-World countries. Interestingly called The Bacchae of Euripides. A Communion Rite, Soyinka's play takes the effects of intertextuality to the extreme, not only by taking the Greek tragedy as hypotext, but by relating Euripides' subversive criticism of Greek imperialism to his own denunciation of colonization and tyranny. Because of its radical use of imagery —such as the fact that the blood which emanates from Pentheus' head at the end of the play becomes wine and everybody drinks from it—the play was not well received in London in the 1970s, but has been recognized as one of Soyinka's masterpieces after that. ; This essay explores Soyinka's social, political and cultural concerns taking as point of departure his exploration of the role of myth in Yoruba culture and its repercussions in contemporary Nigerian society. In his rewriting of Euripides' best known tragedy, Bacchae, Soyinka reflects on the impact of the colonial process and on the role of modernday dictatorship in many Third-World countries. Interestingly called The Bacchae of Euripides. A Communion Rite, Soyinka's play takes the effects of intertextuality to the extreme, not only by taking the Greek tragedy as hypotext, but by relating Euripides' subversive criticism of Greek imperialism to his own denunciation of colonization and tyranny. Because of its radical use of imagery —such as the fact that the blood which emanates from Pentheus' head at the end of the play becomes wine and everybody drinks from it—the play was not well received in London in the 1970s, but has been recognized as one of Soyinka's masterpieces after that.