Iphigenia in Tauris abounds
in irony and deception and at the same time depicts characters seriously
invested in the well‐being of their families. The play, in which Euripides
dramatizes the intersection and resolution of the Orestes and Iphigenia myths,
takes place in Tauris, where the goddess Artemis has transported Iphigenia,
having rescued her from sacrifice on the altar at Aulis by substituting a deer
in her place.
The currently fashionable questions about this play include: What elements in the myth are newly constructed by Euripides? What is the relationship between the cults mentioned in the play and cults practiced historically in both Attica and Tauris? Why is Athena the ex machina resolution rather than Artemis?
The eminent classicist Greg Nagy has called Euripides “the anthropologist of the tragedians” because of his apparently broad knowledge of mythological variants and his innovative use of origin myths for cults in his plays. Iphigenia in Tauris is not only about the establishment of Artemis’ cult in Brauron (just outside Athens) but the play provides an origin story for the cessation of human sacrifice. Who better to stop it than Iphigenia? She gets over her desire for revenge against the Greeks and during the play starts to think the locals rather than Artemis are bloodthirsty. At the end of her deliberations about sacrifice she says οὐδένα γὰρ οἶμαι δαιμόνων εἶναι κακόν. “I believe no god can be evil” (391.
Aristotle's famous analysis of
Iphigenia in Tauris underscores another issue: the importance of the theme of
salvation. The salvation at the end of the play thus concerns the salvation of
Apollo's words and Artemis’ cult; the salvation of the humans is a by‐product
of these needs and does not necessarily match their own desires. Yet neither
god appears in the play. When Artemis is expected, it
is Athena. She appears ex machina in the last scene of the drama, just in time to save Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, her brother Orestes, and his friend
Pylades from being captured as they try to escape from Tauris, a barbarian
country located in modern Crimea.
Orestes had come to
Tauris because he had been instructed by the oracle of Delphi to take a sacred
statue of Artemis to the land of the Athenians. This statue was believed to
have fallen from the sky into the temple of Artemis in Tauris, where years
earlier, Iphigenia had been taken by Artemis at the start of the Trojan War.
The goddess had rescued her just before her father Agamemnon was about to
sacrifice her in order to ensure favorable winds so the Greeks could sail to
Troy. In Tauris Iphigenia served as priestess at the temple, presiding over
human sacrifices. Fortunately, she recognizes Orestes, and instead of
sacrificing him, she decides to trick Thoas, the king of the Taurians, into
letting her take the statue of the goddess out to sea in order to purify it
along with the Greek captives (Orestes and Pylades) before she sacrifices them.
She prays to Artemis, who rescued her at Aulis to help her in the present
crisis, assuring the goddess that it is not right for her to live in Tauris
when she could dwell in Athens, “a city favored by the gods” (1082–8, 1230–3).
For a while, the plot
works perfectly; the Greek ship that had brought Orestes and Pylades to Tauris
comes to get them, while they are in a boat taking the statue to be washed. But
before they can leave the harbor, a wave drives their ship back towards land.
Iphigenia prays to Artemis and the Greek sailors pray to Apollo. Nonetheless,
the ship is driven close to the shore and the Taurians are able to surround it.
But before Thoas can leave the palace and capture them, the gods intervene to
calm the sea and see that Iphigenia and Orestes are able to escape.
Athena orders Thoas to
stop his pursuit of Iphigenia and the cult statue. She explains that Apollo had
ordered Orestes to come to Tauris, and to bring the statue back to her country.
She tells Thoas that he could not capture Orestes even if he tried, since
Poseidon will make the sea smooth for Orestes’ passage back to Greece. Athena
also orders Thoas to send home the Greek women who accompanied Iphigenia to
Tauris and promises Orestes that he will be acquitted in his trial on the
Areopagus at Athens. Thoas agrees to obey the goddess’ commands. Athena
commends him, commands the winds to send the ship on its way, and leaves to
join them in accompanying Iphigenia and Orestes to Athens.
Athena does not say
explicitly why it is she, rather than Artemis, who has intervened to rescue
Iphigenia and Orestes. Perhaps, like Apollo in the Ion, Artemis did not wish to
be reproached by the mortals for the suffering she had caused them. Earlier in
the drama Iphigenia despairingly criticizes Artemis for her “faulty reasoning”
(sophismata, 380) and the ignorance (amathia, 386) that led her to
demand human sacrifices. Iphigenia had believed that her father was going to
cut her throat with his sword as he held her over the altar, until the goddess
suddenly rescued her; but then the goddess made her preside over the slaughter
of other human victims.
But the reason why Artemis does not
appear probably has more to do with Athena than it does with Artemis. Athena
needs to instruct the mortal characters about the future because she is the
goddess of Athens, where both Iphigenia and Orestes are now heading. Athena
presides over the religious affairs of her country and will oversee the trial
of Orestes on the Areopagus. As soon as Athena has stopped Thoas from pursuing
the fugitives, she addresses her remarks to Orestes and Iphigenia in their
ship, heading for Athens: “you can hear a goddess’ voice although you are
not here” (1447). Her directives to them, like her instructions to Theseus in
the Suppliants, concern religious ritual. She tells Orestes to bring the statue
of Artemis to Halae, a town on the east coast of Attica, and build a temple
there to house it. Artemis will be worshiped there with the title Tauropolos in
a ritual named for the country of Tauris and his experiences there. At the cult
festival a sword will be held at a man’s throat and blood will be spilt, in
recollection of the sacrifice Orestes might have undergone at Tauris, had he
and Iphigenia not recognized each other and planned their escape. Iphigenia
will serve as priestess at Artemis’ temple in Brauron. She will be buried
there, and robes will be dedicated to her by women who have died in childbirth.
In this drama, as in the Erechtheus, the goddess’ speech creates a mythic
connection between cults that were originally unrelated. Athena tells Orestes
to bring the cult statue of Artemis that he has taken from Tauris to Halae and
“to build a temple and set up the statue in it, named for the Tauric land and
your sufferings” (1453–4). She adds that “in the future people will celebrate
Artemis in song as Artemis Tauropolos” (1456–7). The similarity in sound
suggests that the two words had a common origin. But in reality, the epithet
tauropolos had nothing to do with the country Tauris in the Crimea. The temple
at Halae and other cults of Artemis in Greece required the sacrifice of bulls
(tauroi).Euripides and other dramatists frequently make such associations
between sound-alike names, because puns were thought to reveal the true meaning
of words.
By connecting the cults
at Tauris and in Attica, Euripides brings out an important contrast between
Athenian culture and that of their counterparts in Scythian Crimea, where
humans rather than bulls were sacrificed to the goddess. Athena states that it
will be the custom at Halae to go through the motions of a human sacrifice, by
placing a sword at a man’s throat and drawing blood. The ritual allows the
goddess to receive blood in recompense for the blood she did not receive
because Orestes was not sacrificed. The unusual ritual also demonstrates that
the Athenians are ethically superior to barbarians like Thoas.
Euripides also emphasizes
the humane values of Athenian culture by having Athena proclaim that Iphigenia
will become the chief priestess (kleidouchos) of Artemis at Brauron, where she
will no longer be required to preside at a ceremony involving the sacrifice of
human beings. In addition, she will be honored by the Athenians after her
death, and thus no longer be isolated, “without marriage, children, city, and
family,” as she was when she was living in Tauris (IT 220). Athena’s
speech ends with a further prediction that brings credit to the Athenian polis.
In the future the Athenians will honor Iphigenia as if she were the
representative of the goddess whom she served as a priestess. Iphigenia will be
buried at Brauron, and robes will be offered to her that had belonged to women
who died in childbirth.
At Brauron and in cults elsewhere in
Greece, including the Athenian Acropolis, inscriptions recorded that women
dedicated robes to Artemis in gratitude for their recovery from childbirth and
women’s diseases.
Perhaps Euripides thought
it appropriate to create a connection between Iphigenia (who in some myths was
sacrificed to Artemis) and women who died in childbirth, because women who died
untimely deaths were sacred to Artemis. It would not have mattered to
Euripides’ audience if the rituals Athena describes did not exist in their day,
since they believed that cult practices could change over time and vary from
polis to polis. Here, as in the Suppliants, the Erechtheus, and the Ion, it was
the goddess’ declared intention that mattered, and the celebration of piety and
ethical values of Athens.
