Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

his introduction to the Bacchae asserts that Euripides served on an embassy to
Syracuse and held a lay priesthood in the cult of Zeus at his birth place in Attica (ir).
During Eurip ides' lifetime theGreek: city -states experienced a series of military,
political and social crises which threate ned their stability . While the Peloponnesian
War was raging, he abandoned his homeland for safety and security in a foreign land.
Similarly. while Nigeria was in a political turmoil following the devastating
civil war, involving a majority of its thirty city-stares, Soyinka left his homeland and
took the oppcrtuairy to re-write Euripides' original . Although the Greeks and Yorubas
sharea mythological. religious and cultural affinity, Soyinka 's transformation of
Eurip ides ' &2cc1rtureflects certain relevant aspects of the postcolonial agenda in its
restoration of the cultural and historical image of the Yorubas distorted by British
imperialism, and its resistance to political and social oppression , nationall y and
interna tionally" This