The Besieged Free: Sophocles’ Philoctetes on Makronisos, Summer 1948

Abstract

Few ancient tragedies capture the sense of geographical, temporal, and societal dislocation as well as
Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a prime play with which inmate actors opened multiple levels of understanding
for the spectators of Makronisos, who were political prisoners of the Greek Left during the Civil War.
The actors of the Third Battalion found freedom in their rehearsals for a production of the Philoctetes,
which was scheduled to open in the late summer of 1948. The Makronisiot Philoctetes lamented that
fellow Greeks had abandoned him to the loneliness of an inhospitable island (Lemnos). The
production conveyed a strong sense of group cohesion and appealed to inmate solidarity to break the
curse of enforced banishment. Sophocles’ play became autobiographical when the prisoners became
participants as well as spectators and understood their tragic state as the drama of the hero who, in a
kind of ‘doublespeak’, commented on the predicament that he shared with his public.