Include bibliografia e indice.

Dionysos, the polis and power / Cornelia Isler-Kerényi -- The politics of Euripides' Bacchae and the preconception of irresolveable contradiction / Richard Seaford -- On the necessity of Dionysus : the return of Hephaestus as a tale of the god that alone can solve unresolvable conflicts and restore an inconsistent whole / Dariusz Karłowicz -- Alexander and Dionysus / Richard Stoneman -- Dionysos against Rome? : the Bacchanalian affair : a matter of power(s) / Jean-Marie Pailler -- Augustus and the Neoi Dionysoi / Fiachra Mac Góráin -- The state as crater : Dionysus and politics in Plutarch's lives of Crassus, Antony and Caesar / Filip Doroszewski -- Dionysus and legitimisation of imperial authority by myth in First and Second Century Rome : Caligula, Domitian and Hadrian / Sławomir Poloczek -- The role of Bacchus/Liber Pater in the Severan religious policy : the Numismatic and epigraphic evidence / Małgorzata Krawczyk -- The rule of Dionysus in the light of the Orphic theogony (Hieroi Logoi in 24 Rhapsodies) / Marek Job -- Dionysus in the mirror of late antiquity : religion, philosophy and politics / David Hernández de la Fuente.

"This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader can therefore observe how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion".