Filip Doroszewski is Assistant Professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Poland. His recent publications include a co-edited volume Nonnus of Panopolis in Context III (2021) and a monograph Orgies of Words. Mystery Terminology in the Paraphrase of St. John's Gospel by Nonnus of Panopolis (forthcoming).

Dariusz Karowicz is a Polish philosopher and a lecturer at Warsaw University, Poland. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the philosophical magazine 'Political Theology'. His books in English include The Archparadox of Death: Martyrdom as a Philosophical Category (2016) and Socrates and Other Saints (2017).

List of Figures; List of Contributors; List of Abbreviations; Introduction, Filip Doroszewski, Dariusz Karowicz; Part I Dionysus and the Polis; 1. Dionysos, the Polis and Power, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi; 2. The Politics of Euripides' Bacchae and the Preconception of Irresolveable Contradiction, Richard Seaford; 3. 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 Karowicz; 4. Alexander and Dionysus, Richard Stoneman; Part II Dionysus in Rome; 5. Dionysos against Rome? The Bacchanalian Affair: a Matter of Power(s), Jean-Marie Pailler; 6. Augustus and the Neoi Dionysoi, Fiachra Mac Góráin; 7. The State as Crater: Dionysus and Politics in Plutarch's Lives of Crassus, Antony and Caesar, Filip Doroszewski; 8. Dionysus and Legitimisation of Imperial Authority by Myth in First- and Second-Century Rome: Caligula, Domitian and Hadrian, Sawomir Poloczek; 9. The Role of Bacchus/Liber Pater in the Severan Religious Policy: the Numismatic and Epigraphic Evidence, Mägorzata Krawczyk; Part III Late-Antique Reflection on Dionysus; 10. The Rule of Dionysus in the Light of the Orphic Theogony (Hieroi Logoi in 24 Rhapsodies), Marek Job; 11. Dionysus in the Mirror of Late Antiquity: Religion, Philosophy and Politics, David Hernández de la Fuente; Index