The name of Iphigenia is absent from Homer. In one passage he mentions three daughters of Agamemnon as still alive and marriageable in the final phase of the Trojan war: Electra, Chrysothemis and Iphianassa. The last is sometimes identified with Iphigenia in later usage, but if that was Homer’s understanding, either he must be unaware of the tale that Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter at Aulis to gain a fair wind for the fleet, or he is silently rejecting it. It has often been argued that certain tales were objectionable in Homer’s eyes, and that he might have avoided stories involving kin-killing: in the Odyssey he does mention, but guardedly and in passing, the matricide of Orestes. Other poets, however, were less squeamish or more sensational: the sacrifice of Iphigenia figured in an early Greek epic poem known as the Cypria, and is mentioned frequently in Attic tragedy: it forms a sinister part of the past in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, is invoked as a major part of the indictment against Agamemnon by Clytemnestra in the Electra plays of both Sophocles and Euripides, and is dramatized at length in Euripides’ posthumous Iphigenia at Aulis.
As early as the Cypria, there was a tradition that Iphigenia did not die at Aulis but was miraculously rescued by Artemis, to whom she was being offered in sacrifice. According to the surviving summary of the Cypria, Artemis carried her off to the land of the Tauri (the modern Crimea) and made her immortal. In some versions she is replaced by a deer or a bear, beasts associated with the goddess. But in Aeschylus it is taken for granted by all, including the audience, that she died at the altar; nor would the ferocity of Clytemnestra’s vengeance be easy even for her to justify were this not believed to be the case. Similarly in this play, not even Iphigenia’s surviving relations suppose that she is still alive. Since she is also misled by a dream about her brother, and does not know him when he arrives, the playwright has scope for many-sided ironies.
The most striking feature of the Euripidean version, indeed, is that Iphigenia has not been immortalized or translated forever to some remote land of the gods, but is still herself, a living woman, though forced to dwell in a savage land and act as priestess to a barbaric cult of Artemis, a fiercer version of the kindly Greek divinity; she is even obliged to preside over human sacrifices. But since she is still alive, and within the human sphere, the possibility exists of her being found and rescued; and who better to do so than her brother Orestes? The journey of Orestes to the land of the Tauri, and the bringing-home of Iphigenia to Greece, are probably though not certainly Euripides’ own inventions. What can definitely be said is that this plot gave abundant opportunity for the type of scene which Euripides particularly favours: scenes in which people who are related or otherwise close to one another are brought together without knowing it; in which they misunderstand or misdirect each other through ambiguous remarks or efforts at self-concealment; and in which the seeming inevitability of recognition is constantly delayed, deflected, but eventually brought about, with the deferment adding to the joy of the participants and the relieved satisfaction of the audience. We meet with scenes of this kind in Ion and Helen, to look no further; but the long-drawn-out recognition sequence in this play best shows Euripides’ total mastery of the technique.
Orestes is traditionally heir to the throne of Mycenae or Argos, but since Aeschylus’ time the tragedians had also associated him with Athens. In Aeschylus’ Eumenides he is given refuge from the Furies and tried for matricide in the Athenian court of the Areopagus; acquitted, he returns to claim his throne. Euripides presupposes the trial in Athens, which Orestes narrates to his sister in his speech at 939ff. But according to this speech that was not the whole story: some of the Furies were not satisfied with the verdict, and have continued to pursue him. Once again he took refuge at Delphi, and appealed to his protector Apollo, who declared that he must journey to the land of the Tauri to seize a statue, an image of Artemis, and bring it back to Athens. The same speech also gives considerable detail about his reception in Athens, and we can recognize allusions to the supposed origins of Athenian festivals and rituals. When at the end of the play Athena rather than Apollo appears in order to resolve the action, her own speech also prophesies aspects of the future cult of Artemis Tauropolos in Attica (1446–74). In this way Euripides uses aetiology (the tracing of the origins of a custom or cult) to link the mythic past with the historical period. He also brings Orestes more decisively within the sphere ofAttic mythology and religion. Iphigenia too has an Athenian destiny: when Athena foretells that her duty is ‘to keep the keys for this goddess in Brauron’s holy meadows’, this anticipates the cultic worship which later Athenians paid to Iphigenia herself, as a companion or indeed an aspect of the goddess Artemis. Although the main attraction of the play for modern audiences involves the ironies of identity and recognition, these other aspects show how important the religious and aetiological aspects of tragedy could still be, even late in the century.
The divinities of Iphigenia form a striking contrast with the malignant gods of Heracles or the more ambiguous role of Apollo in Ion. Although Orestes suffers exile and madness, he will finally return to rule in his native land; Iphigenia will come home; even the chorus of Greek women are allowed to return to Greece. The image of Artemis is to be conveyed to a place where it will, we are confident, receive more appropriate worship than in the wilds of the Taurians. Athenian rites will commemorate the hardships of Orestes. Even Thoas, king of the Tauric people, is appeased and accepts the divine will. Although Iphigenia had earlier expressed her revulsion at the notion that Artemis or any deity might welcome human sacrifice (380–91), that moment of criticism is isolated, and the issue of human sacrifice is not explored as a moral issue, but rather deployed as a source of tension and suspense: will Orestes’ sister shed the blood of her brother? Here all concerned reach a happy outcome through the wisdom of the gods, whereas in Hippolytus or Heracles the gods bring suffering and destruction. Greek myths and Greek tragedy had room for both types of tale.