Clássicos Subversivos

(cruzar com este post, a propósito do qual ler, já agora, este)
Metaxas [o ditador grego do Regime do 4 de Agosto (1936-41)] had been promoting ancient drama in the form of mass open-air spectacles, and he had received the public endorsement of writers such as Yeorgios Theotokas, a politically moderate intellectual, and others with more onservative political agendas who stressed the value of classical literature. Under Metaxas, too, the chauvinist presumption grew that revivals of classical tragedy had to uphold this treasured legacy of Greece's national, 'monumental' poetry. Metaxas further subjected theatre to state censorship and control of thought. He tried to ban, in particular, a National Theatre production of Sophocles' Antigone, because the heroine proclaimed disobedience to the self-serving laws of tyranny. Unable to cancel te scheduled performances, the government had certain 'inappropriate' lines cut from the script (Hamlakis 2007: 178; Van Steen 2001: 141). [n. 14]

[nota 14:] Metaxas also excluded the famous Funeral Oration of Pericles from school readings of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (2.34-47). The dictator did not want the new Hellenic generation to be brought up with the ideals of freedom and democracy as expounded by the ancient Greeks:

In the teaching of ancient Greek in the 6th High School grade, omit the funeral oration of Pericles, substituting this with some Platonic dialogue, because the funeral oration, truthfully grand of democratic ideas, may be misunderstood by the students as indirect criticism of the vigorous governmental policy and, in general, of the trend of the present State... [T]here exists the probability that these pages will produce the same ruinous and disintegrating results that they did during the period of the Peloponnesian War, when they were recited to the unstable populace of Athens by the great Pericles, who presented so brilliantly the victories of democracy to the intellectually unprepared Athenian rabble... [excerto da directiva estatal da autoria de D. Papoulias mas em nome de Metaxas].  

Gonda Van Steen, Theatre of the Condemned. 

Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands. Oxford 2011: 43-44.