Between Bacchae and Bahanalii—balkanizing classical reception.

This article examines a contrapuntal reading of Euripides' *Bacchae* alongside Goran Stefanovski's *Bahanalii*, a play created amid the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, to explore how both texts problematize conservative epistemologies by positioning borderlands as sites of knowledge production. Euripides' *Bacchae* challenges traditional interpretations by depicting Dionysus arriving from a mixed Greek and non-Greek world, thereby destabilizing rigid ethnic boundaries and Greek exceptionalism in the context of Athens' declining power. Stefanovski's *Bahanalii* reimagines Dionysus (Dionis) as a complex figure embodying both the epistemological power of borders and the violence afflicting the Balkans in the 1990s, reflecting the fragile multicultural identity of the newly independent Republic of North Macedonia. Together, these plays contribute to a "balkanizing" paradigm of classical reception that critiques essentialist narratives and highlights the productive tensions of cultural and geopolitical borderlands, offering a nuanced framework for understanding classical texts in relation to modern Balkan histories and identities.