412 BC

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS

by Euripides

translated by Robert Potter

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY -

Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon

Orestes, brother of IPHIGENIA

Pylades, friend of Orestes

Thoas, King of the Taurians

Herdsman

Messenger

Minerva

Chorus of Greek Women, captives, attendants on Iphigenia in the

temple

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS -

(SCENE:-Before the great temple of Diana of the Taurians. A blood-

stained altar is prominently in view. IPHIGENIA, clad as a

priestess, enters from the temple.) -

IPHIGENIA

To Pisa, by the fleetest coursers borne,

Comes Pelops, son of Tantalus, and weds

The virgin daughter of Oenomaus:

From her sprung Atreus; Menelaus from him,

And Agamemnon; I from him derive

My birth, his Iphigenia, by his queen,

Daughter of Tyndarus. Where frequent winds

Swell the vex'd Euripus with eddying blasts,

And roll the darkening waves, my father slew me,

A victim to Diana, so he thought,

For Helen's sake, its bay where Aulis winds,

To fame well known; for there his thousand ships,

The armament of Greece, the imperial chief

Convened, desirous that his Greeks should snatch

The glorious crown of victory from Troy,

And punish the base insult to the bed

Of Helen, vengeance grateful to the soul

Of Menelaus. But 'gainst his ships the sea

Long barr'd, and not one favouring breeze to swell

His flagging sails, the hallow'd flames the chief

Consults, and Calchas thus disclosed the fates:-

"Imperial leader of the Grecian host,

Hence shalt thou not unmoor thy vessels, ere

Diana as a victim shall receive

Thy daughter Iphigenia: what the year

Most beauteous should produce, thou to the queen

Dispensing light didst vow to sacrifice:

A daughter Clytemnestra in thy house

Then bore (the peerless grace of beauty thus

To me assigning); her must thou devote

The victim." Then Ulysses by his arts,

Me, to Achilles as design'd a bride,

Won from my mother. My unhappy fate

To Aulis brought me; on the altar there

High was I placed, and o'er me gleam'd the sword,

Aiming the fatal wound: but from the stroke

Diana snatch'd me, in exchange a hind

Giving the Grecians; through the lucid air

Me she conveyed to Tauris, here to dwell,

Where o'er barbarians a barbaric king

Holds his rude sway, named Thoas, whose swift foot

Equals the rapid wing: me he appoints

The priestess of this temple, where such rites

Are pleasing to Diana, that the name

Alone claims honour; for I sacrifice

(Such, ere I came, the custom of the state)

Whatever Grecian to this savage shore

Is driven: the previous rites are mine; the deed

Of blood, too horrid to be told, devolves

On others in the temple: but the rest,

In reverence to the goddess, I forbear.

But the strange visions which the night now past

Brought with it, to the air, if that may soothe

My troubled thought, I will relate. I seem'd,

As I lay sleeping, from this land removed,

To dwell at Argos, resting on my couch

Mid the apartments of the virgin train.

Sudden the firm earth shook: I fled, and stood

Without; the battlements I saw, and all

The rocking roof fall from its lofty height

In ruins to the ground: of all the house,

My father's house, one pillar, as I thought,

Alone was left, which from its cornice waved

A length of auburn locks, and human voice

Assumed: the bloody office, which is mine

To strangers here, respecting, I to death,

Sprinkling the lustral drops, devoted it

With many tears. My dream I thus expound:-

Orestes, whom I hallow'd by my rites,

Is dead: for sons are pillars of the house;

They, whom my lustral lavers sprinkle, die.

I cannot to my friends apply my dream,

For Strophius, when I perish'd, had no son.

Now, to my brother, absent though he be,

Libations will I offer: this, at least,

With the attendants given me by the king,

Virgins of Greece, I can: but what the cause

They yet attend me not within the house,

The temple of the goddess, where I dwell? -

(She goes into the temple. ORESTES and PYLADES enter cautiously.) -