In this paper, it is argued that the conception of politics as the regulation of the living in the name of the security and happiness of the state is as old as the western political thought itself: the politico-philosophical categories of the Greek and Roman thought were already biopolitical categories. It is also argued here that Christianity, instead of constituting a backdrop of modern governmentality and biopolitics, entailed a radical break with the classical biopolitical rationality, the governmental wisdom of the pagan Greco-Roman world. It is not the Christian pastorate, but the renaissance of the classical culture and literature that is the true prelude to modern governmentality and biopolitics.
