Iphigenia among the Taurians by Euripides

*contains spoilers*


Originally performed in approximately 413 BC, Euripides’s Iphigenia among the Taurians concerns, once more, the line of Atreus. In my blog about Sophocles’s Electra, I address the conflict between Electra and Clytemnestra, and thus Clytemnestra’s death at the hands of her son and Electra’s brother, Orestes, because of her slaying of the great Agamemnon, husband to Clytemnestra and father of both Orestes and Electra. Sophocles also alludes to Iphigenia’s death, which you may remember came about because Agamemnon was required to sacrifice her to appease the goddess Artemis so as to safely transport his men to Troy in order that they may win their great war. Euripides takes this story upon himself, and mentions how Iphigenia was led away from Argos to wed Achilles at the behest of Agamemnon, but was instead offered as a sacrifice to Artemis who “stole [her] away and gave the Achaeans a deer in [her] place”. The place where Iphigenia was whisked off to is the “land of the Taurians where Thoas rules, a barbarian among barbarians”.


In Tauris, Iphigenia is given the sacred right of sacrificing Greek wanderers to the goddess Artemis, and this is where Orestes comes in. Having slain his own mother so as to avenge the slaying of his father, Orestes must face a trial in Athens and, in doing so, endures the wrath of the avenging goddesses, The Erinyes (also referred to as The Furies), who have finally caught up with him. Orestes is thankfully acquitted (the votes come in at a draw but from here on in this indicates an acquittal), and Phoebus Apollo, who has ever been at the side of Orestes, urges him to flee Athens on a mission to retrieve Artemis’s statue so that he might eventually be forgiven for the matricide. On docking in Tauris, Orestes and his cousin, Pylades, are captured by the Taurians and brought to Iphigenia to be sacrificed – it is here that Euripides uses dramatic irony to ramp up the tension in the scene, as Orestes, Pylades and Iphigenia make constant references to each other and their connecting plights without ever discerning that they are both, in fact, connected in the most direct way possible;


IPHIGENIA: Take this message to Orestes, the son of Agamemnon: ‘Iphigenia, who was slaughtered at Aulis, sends this letter. She is alive, though people there think that she lives no longer’.

ORESTES: Where is she? Has she come back from the dead?

IPHIGENIA: It is the woman you see before you now. Don’t break my flow of words…


Eventually they catch on, and manage to formulate a plot to escape Tauris with the use of Iphigenia’s wiles – somewhere in between, we have Pylades and Orestes declaring that they could not return to Argos without the other, though Orestes does manage to declare that he would willingly kill Thoas in order to escape, which is swiftly followed by a castigating Iphigenia reminding him that it would not be very Greek of her to repay Thoas’s hospitality in such a way – and with the statue of Artemis along with them. The excitement with which Iphigenia implements her plan can be seen by Euripides’s change in meter from iambic rhythm to trochaic;


IPHIGENIA: And send some of your servants with me. THOAS: These ones will occupy you

IPHIGENIA: And send someone to tell the citizens…THOAS: Of what emergency?


They manage to implement the plan perfectly, but do not complete it before Thoas is notified and their ship is dashed back from its retreat by the waves. It must be noted here that the Chorus agrees to lie to Thoas so as to aid Iphigenia’s escape, and further outside help is required, this time by a deus ex machina in Pallas Athena (notably not Phoebus Apollo), as she takes up a favour from Poseidon in allowing the safe passages of Orestes, Pylades and Iphigenia across the seas to Greece. The Chorus, portrayed as servants from a far away land, manages to hitch a ride, also! As a blatant reminder that these plays were submitted by the likes of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles in annual competitions, the Chorus exhibits a not-so-subtle nod and a wink to the judges;


O most reverent Victory,

I pray you to protect my life

And never cease to crown me.

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