Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon’s Guide to Childrearing
"The Sacrifice of Iphigenia"
Voltaire, and the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius long before him, held up the Iphigenia story as a parable of religious fanaticism, but this seems to miss the mark a bit- this isn’t a story of religion, but extortion. Or maybe just deal-making. Agamemnon’s trade: his daughter’s life for the Greek fleet’s quick passage to Troy: is a reminder of how dangerous it is being too close to an ambitious man.
Ismail Kadare saw parallels with the climbers in the Communist states betraying less-than-loyal family members to rise in the ranks, certainly being Stalin’s son wasn’t much help for Yakov Dzhugashvili. To be clear, we’re not talking simply about another sort of ideological fanaticism- a belief held so tightly it squeezes out all of one’s humanity; instead, the danger with the ambitious man is that he has no beliefs at all that might weigh down his climb, and so can arise in any climate.
The striver Agamemnon is literally stuck between point A and point B: the goddess Artemis has stopped the weather and frozen his fleet in the Bay of Aulis, as payback for a youthful transgression. In order to get to Troy, he needs to placate the goddess, and to do that he needs to offer his daughter Iphigenia as a blood sacrifice for reasons that are never entirely clear, but satisfy both the divine blood lust and the audience’s desire to see characters struggle through impossible predicaments in tragedies.
From the beginning to the end, the plot churns forward like a conveyor belt to a very bad place. We know that he’s going to sacrifice Iphigenia, tricking the girl and her mother Clytaemnestra into believing she is coming to marry the heroic Achilles; and yet, nothing, even the inevitable unmasking of his scheme, seems to make any difference. Achilles does the right thing, standing up to Agamemnon for the first time- the Iliad details their feud during the war with Troy. Clytemnestra rails against her husband desperately- when he returns from the war, she and her lover will butcher him for killing her daughter. Even the soldiers seem ready to abandon the whole plan.
But Iphigenia is ready to die. Her resolve is horror-inducing. Euripides is expert at inducing dread and revulsion. Here he holds out hope for her rescue, repeatedly, before having her stroll to the altar, not a bride but a forfeiture. Agamemnon’s motivations are too human to be incomprehensible, but what about Iphigenia? Why does she die? Is it to spare her father the disastrous outcome, or those Greeks who will likely be slaughtered if the ships don’t make it to Troy? Is her father’s betrayal too much to bear? I suspect the most likely reason is that classic Greek motivation of honor. Iphigenia will be remembered well for dying for her country; Greek heros always want to leave behind a good-looking corpse. Her heroism is ironic and an apt image of war as the sacrificial slaughter of the young by the old. It’s almost too much to bear, which was surely Euripides’s intention.
Endnote: Thanks to Scott for finding this online text of the play.
Rufus –
I know zip about the ancient Greeks, so I am throwing this out looking for guidance, not offering up a solution:
Were the Greeks’ feeling about women similar to other olde worlde cultures? If so, does there need to be a motivation for Iphigenia? What I mean is, is the lesson to be learned possibly that women should just do what their fathers say, because there is no real value to a daughter’s life anyway? Put another way, would ancient Greeks understand that a woman sacrificing her life for her father was a big deal; or would they have seen it as a far different matter from a moral point of view if Agamemnon had been asked to sacrifice a son?Report
Oh, I should probably re-state this, since there are plenty of newcomers here: I’m no classicist. I study Early Modern Europe, with a focus on France right before and right after the Revolution, so I’m maybe a bit helpful if there are questions about Chateaubriand, but maybe less so here. But that’s been a personal goal of this canon-blogging project: to get outside my comfort zone and learn more about topics that I know about as well as your average undergrad. Academia, for all the talk about ‘interdisciplinarity’, often works against or discourages such dabbling. I’m an admitted pisher and a dabbler! It’s just fun to explore.
So, as far as I can tell, I think your suspicion is right- Iphigenia actually says as much- that the death of a daughter is no great tragedy and vastly outweighed by the deaths that might result otherwise, but also vastly outweighed by the death of a son. I’ve said before that Euripides has become my favorite of the Athenian tragedians, and it’s really because he does things like this- when she tells us how worthless her life is as a girl, I think we’re supposed to feel great sympathy for her, and I think the original audience was as well. Euripides’s plays are, at least to me, much more problematic and troubling than those of Aeschylus or Sophokles, which I think probably reflects the time in which he was writing. But his plays can be downright savage and unresolvable in a way that appeals to my tastes, probably reflecting the time in which I’m reading them.
So, I don’t know if we’re to learn a lesson from her self-sacrifice, but I do think we’re supposed to be very aware that her society values her life less than they would a boy’s life and I think it’s supposed to make her death more troubling.Report
“but I do think we’re supposed to be very aware that her society values her life less than they would a boy’s life and I think it’s supposed to make her death more troubling.”
And indeed it does. Good lord, I think I’m about to go actually read some Euripides. For fun no less.
Oh Rufus, what have you done?Report
You all are just test subjects for pushing this stuff on undergrads.
(Sadly, I haven’t found a complete version of the play online, or I’d have linked to it.)Report
google is your friend
http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/iphi_aul.html
(can’t find a translation credit; seems OK on quick scan)
http://bacchicstage.com/IphigeneiaInAulis.htm (seems like an amateur translation, not so good though infinitely better than I could do)
http://www.ihaystack.com/authors/e/euripides/00015081_the_tragedies_of_euripides_volume_i/00015081_english_utf8.htm
(OCR of the Buckley translation – all the text and notes, but in a hard to read format)
Report
Thanks for that!
Yeah, I usually recommend the MIT Internet Classics Library, and was thinking of linking to that for this one, but you’ll notice that it cuts off about 2/3rds of the way in- before Iphigenia even has any lines! I didn’t know what that was about.
I also looked in Google Books- but you get a lot of late 19th century translations with lots of thees and thous, which reads weird.
The second link there is okay, but it has the happy ending that I’m pretty sure is false.
So, I’ll add the Buckley translation as a link, although I agree with you about the format being hard to read. And thanks again.Report
The text version at MIT is complete (or at least it goes to the end):
http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/iphi_aul.pl.txt (still no translation credit that I can find; style reads like late 19th/early 20th)
it’s got the replacement with the hind/stag at the end
the HTML looks like it was some sort of autoconverter that died in the middle of Clytaemnestra’s speech.
regarding the second one, I didn’t look to the end – the translation so grated on my internal ear that I stopped. Sorry for the bogus link.
what translation would you recommend (i.e. of the dead tree variety)?Report
It’s no problem. I think I’ll use the MIT text version. Usually I just read the Loeb Classical library translations, although a lot of people find them too dry and awkward. I like them. I know the Penn Greek Drama Series has covered this one and I really like their other translations, so I’d probably get that.Report
I’m maybe a bit helpful if there are questions about Chateaubriand,
Besides white wine and shallots, what would you put in the marinade?Report
The secret with all French recipes: when in doubt, add butter, whether it’s needed or not.Report
Here’s some discussion of how actual Classical cultures treated women: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/06/the-classical-approachReport
Thanks. That’s pretty interesting.Report
Then somebody came alone later on and ruined the whole tale by deciding Iphigenia was saved at the last minute, whisked away, unbeknownst to her father and all the other mortals, by for some strange reason the goddess Athene, I think. She was later happily reunited with her beloved brother Orestes.
I forget now the name of the playwright who wrote that particular later retelling of the myth. I think he got a job sometime later on writing for Marvel Comics.Report
Yeah, I don’t know about the modern ones. According to the myth, though, she was saved at the last minute by Artemis, who I think had her swapped for a fawn. This doesn’t happen in Euripides’s play, but there have been accounts of a missing final scene in which a messenger appears and tells us all that happened. Nobody’s found that scene and it might be a bit like E.T. coming back to life at the end. Nevertheless, Euripides did write another play earlier about Iphigenia, ‘Iphigenia in Tauris’, and that one is set years later, after Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon have been killed and Iphigenia is stuck on Tauris, where she has the ironic job of ritually sacrificing people who land on the island. So, clearly, that one sticks to the myth and Iphigenia was saved. You’ll notice that the plays in which Clytaemnestra kills Agamemnon for killing her daughter might not make a hell of a lot of sense in this version- but many accounts held that, yes, Artemis saved her, but in a way that her family did not know she was saved. Also, I would love to see a Marvel comics version of this story.Report
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl called Iphigenia goes walking
And when she passes,
each one she passes goes – ah
When she dies, she’s like a sacrifice
That burns like a fire and chills just like ice
That when she passes,
each one she passes goes – ooh(ooh)Report
I really like that comment.Report
I’ll write a real one tomorrow.
This is my last day of vacation and thinking is not my strong suit.Report
No, I’m serious. That was much cleverer than anything I could come up with.Report
Best comment everReport
“Troy? Is her father’s betrayal too much to bear? I suspect the most likely reason is that classic Greek motivation of honor. Iphigenia will be remembered well for dying for her country; Greek heros always want to leave behind a good-looking corpse. Her heroism is ironic and an apt image of war as the sacrificial slaughter of the young by the old. It’s almost too much to bear, which was surely Euripides’s intention.”
I like this – both the idea (of the playwright) of having a woman die for honr, and the idea of war as a sacrifice.Report