Iphigeneia in Tauris

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the reworking of 'Iphigeneia in Tauris' by Goethe, see Iphigenia in Tauris (Goethe). For the operatic adaptation by Christoph Willibald Gluck, see Iphigénie en Tauride.

Iphigeneia in Tauris
Orestes and Pylades brought before Iphigenia by Joseph Strutt
Written by	Euripides
Chorus	Greek Slave Women
Characters	Iphigeneia Orestes Pylades King Thoas Athena herdsman servant
Setting	Tauris, a region of Scythia in the northern Black Sea
This box: view • talk • edit

Iphigeneia in Tauris (in Greek: Iφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Ταύροις) is a drama by the playwright Euripides, written sometime between 414 BC and 412 BC. It has much in common with another of Euripides's plays, Helen, and is often described as a romance, a melodrama or an escape play.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Background

Years before the time period covered by the play, the young princess Iphigeneia narrowly avoided death by sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. (See plot of Iphigeneia at Aulis.) At the last moment, however the goddess Artemis, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, intervened and replaced Iphigeneia on the altar with a deer, saving the girl and sweeping her off to Tauris. She has since been made a priestess at the temple of Artemis in Tauris, a position in which she has the gruesome task of ritually sacrificing foreigners who land on King Thoas's shores.

Iphigeneia hates her forced religious servitude and is desperate to contact her family in Greece, inform them that, thanks to the miraculous swap performed by Artemis, she is still alive and return to her homeland, leaving the role of high priestess to someone else. Furthermore, she has had a prophetic dream about her younger brother Orestes and believes, based on it, that he is dead.

Meanwhile, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon with assistance from his friend Pylades. He becomes haunted by the Erinyes for committing the crime and goes through periodic fits of madness. He is told by Apollo to go to Athens be brought to trial (as portrayed in Eumenides by Aeschylus). Although the trial ends in his favour, the Erinyes continue to haunt him. Apollo sends him to steal a sacred statue of Artemis to bring back to Athens so that he may be set free.

[edit] Plot

Contrary to Iphigeneia's dream, then, Orestes is still alive and on his way to Tauris with Pylades to steal the sacred statue. They have no idea that Iphigeneia is there. They are captured by Taurian guards and brought to the temple to be killed, as is customary.

Iphigeneia and Orestes discover one another's identities and together devise a plan to escape. Iphigeneia tells King Thoas that the statue of Artemis has been spiritually polluted because of her brother's matricide and advises him to make the foreigners cleanse the idol in the sea to remove the dishonour she, as its keeper, has brought upon it. The three Greeks use this as an opportunity to escape on Orestes and Pylades's ship, bringing the statue with them. Thoas vows to pursue and kill them but is stopped by the goddess Athena, who appears at the end to give instructions to the characters.