On this occasion the play we are to see is "Iphigenia in Tauris," written by Euripides, one of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists.
The legends and traditions from which most of the Greek plays took their plots were, of course, well known to the Athenians. They were stories commemorating some great event, or explaining some religious observance, but naturally these legends were differently treated by different dramatists, each of whom brought out a different side of the story to enforce some particular lesson which he wished to bring home to the people, and this is especially true of the legends like that of Iphigenia connected with the Fall of Troy.
In the opening speech of this play, Iphigenia very briefly tells her story up to the moment when the play begins. Just as the Greeks had been ready to sail for Troy, they were wind-bound at Aulis. The wise men were consulted as to the meaning of this, and how the gods who must in some way have been offended, might be appeased, so that fair winds might send them on their way. Calchas, the seer, told them that Artemis demanded the sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, King of Argos, the great leader of the host, and her father sent for her accordingly. The maiden was at home with her mother, and the messenger who was sent to Argos to bring her was charged to say that her father desired to wed her to the hero Achilles. She came and the sacrifice was offered, but at the supreme moment, Artemis carried Iphigenia away and placed her in the land of the Tauri, a wild and barbarous tribe, as their priestess. These Tauri had an image of Artemis in a temple, to which they sacrificed all strangers who were cast on their shores, and it was the duty of the priestess to consecrate each victim before he was slain. Here, performing this rite, had Iphigenia lived for more than ten years, but never yet had a Greek come to this wild land. She knew, of course, nothing of what had happened at Troy or afterwards; she did not know that on his return home her father had been slain by Clytemnestra his wife, or that Orestes, her brother, had avenged that death by slaughtering his own mother, after which deed he had wandered from place to place pursued by the relentless torment of the Furies. Bitter against the Greeks for having willed her sacrifice at Aulis, Iphigenia says of herself that she is "turned to stone, and has no pity left in her," and she half hopes that the day will come when a Greek shall be brought to her to be offered in his turn to the goddess.
In the meantime, Orestes, tormented beyond endurance by the Furies, had gone to the Oracle of Apollo, to ask how he might be purified from his sin, and Apollo had told him to go to the land of the Tauri and bring back to Attica the image of Artemis his sister, so that it might no longer be stained by the blood of the human sacrifices. And so it comes about that Orestes is the first Greek who will be brought to Iphigenia for sacrifice to Artemis. It is at this moment that the play opens.[[2]]
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
IPHIGENIA.
ORESTES, her brother.
PYLADES, friend to Orestes.
THOAS, King of Tauris.
A HERDSMAN.
A MESSENGER.
CHORUS of captive Greek Women, handmaids to Iphigenia.
THE GODDESS, PALLAS ATHENA.
The scene shows a great and barbaric Temple on a desolate sea-coast. An altar is visible stained with blood. There are spoils of slain men hanging from the roof. Iphigenia, in the dress of a priestess, comes out of the Temple, and in a speech that serves really as a Prologue to the play, she tells her story. At the end of her speech, which is haunted throughout by a sense of exile and homesickness, she describes a strange dream she has just had, which she interprets as meaning that Orestes, her brother, is dead. She then goes into the Temple.