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INTRODUCTION
LACK of both external and internal evidence makes it impossible to date
the Iphigenia in Tauris, though from its general tone approximately 420
B.C. seems a reasonable time for its composition. As is usual in a great
many Euripidean plays, there is an element of aetiology present. Apparently
a local religious festival in Attica, to which Euripides alludes in
lines 1450 ff., attracted the poet's attention, and hence he connected his
interpretation of the familiar legend of Iphigenia with certain features of
contemporary religious ritual. Euripides, by using this device, perhaps
may have given his play greater immediacy in the eyes of his Athenian
audience, but he has not rendered the aetiological factor as relevant to
the central nature of his piece, as Aeschylus has, for example, in The
Eumenides, when he deals with the court of the Areopagus.
Some critics have felt that Euripides sought escape from the discouraging
and disillusioning events of his times by composing what they would
call "romantic" plays. In many ways this contention seems valid and it
applies with particular cogency to the Iphigenia in Tauris. Here we meet
a drama of excitement and adventure in which the protagonists extricate
themselves successfully and triumphantly from a seemingly fatal situation.
The prologue reveals that Euripides has adopted for his play the
variant legend which recorded that Iphigenia had not actually been killed
at Aulis. Her father, Agamemnon, in guilty obedience to the prophecy of
Calchas, had brought her to Aulis to sacrifice her to Artemis (or Diana,
as the translator of this play calls her) in order that the great expedition
might sail for Troy. At the last moment Artemis substituted a hind for the
maiden at the altar, and carried her far away to the land of the Taurians.
Here under the orders of their king Thoas, she now serves as a priestess
of the goddess, part of whose barbaric rite demands that all strangers who
come to the land must be slain in religious sacrifice. The tense dramatic
situation commences with the appearance of Iphigenia's brother, Orestes,
and his friend Pylades, who are of course in the category of potential
victims of the rite.
Euripides has presented two excellent characterizations in the play.
Orestes is drawn as one whose former deeds have left upon him an in-
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