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THE IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS OF EURIPIDES
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY
GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D. Litt.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
PREFACE
The Iphigenia in Tauris is not in the modern sense a tragedy; it
is a romantic play, beginning in a tragic atmosphere and moving
through perils and escapes to a happy end. To the archaeologist
the cause of this lies in the ritual on which the play is based.
All Greek tragedies that we know have as their nucleus something
which the Greeks called an Aition--a cause or origin. They all
explain some ritual or observance or commemorate some great event.
Nearly all, as a matter of fact, have for this Aition a Tomb
Ritual, as, for instance, the Hippolytus has the worship paid by
the Trozenian Maidens at that hero's grave. The use of this Tomb
Ritual may well explain both the intense shadow of death that
normally hangs over the Greek tragedies, and also perhaps the
feeling of the Fatality, which is, rightly or wrongly, supposed to
be prominent in them. For if you are actually engaged in
commemorating your hero's funeral, it follows that all through the
story, however bright his prospects may seem, you feel that he is
bound to die; he cannot escape. A good many tragedies, however,
are built not on Tomb Rituals but on other sacred Aitia: on the
foundation of a city, like the Aetnae, the ritual of the torch-
race, like the Prometheus; on some great legendary succouring of
the oppressed, like the Suppliant Women of Aeschylus and
Euripides. And the rite on which the Iphigenia is based is
essentially one in which a man is brought to the verge of death
but just does not die.
The rite is explained in 11. 1450 ff. of the play. On a certain
festival at Halae in Attica a human victim was led to the altar of
Artemis Tauropolos, touched on the throat with a sword and then
set free: very much what happened to Orestes among the Tauri, and
exactly what happened to Iphigenia at Aulis. Both legends have
doubtless grown out of the same ritual.
Like all the great Greek legends, the Iphigenia myths take many
varying forms. They are all of them, in their essence, conjectural
restorations, by poets or other 'wise men,' of supposed early
history. According to the present play, Agamemnon, when just about
to sail with all the powers of Greece against Troy, was bound by
weather at Aulis. The medicine-man Calchas explained that Artemis
demanded the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, who was then at
home with her mother, Clytemnestra. Odysseus and Agamemnon sent
for the maiden on the pretext that she was to be married to the
famous young hero, Achilles; she was brought to Aulis and
treacherously slaughtered--or, at least, so people thought.
There is a subject for tragedy there; and it was brilliantly
treated in Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, which was probably left
unfinished at his death. But our play chooses a later moment of
the story.
In reality Artemis at the last moment saved Iphigenia, rapt her
away from mortal eyes and set her down in the land of the Tauri to
be her priestess. (In Tauris is only the Latin for "among the
Tauri.") These Tauri possessed an image of Artemis which had
fallen from heaven, and kept up a savage rite of sacrificing to it
all strangers who were cast on their shores. Iphigenia, obedient
to her goddess, and held by "the spell of the altar," had to
consecrate the victims as they went in to be slain. So far only
barbarian strangers had come: she waited half in horror, half in a
rage of revenge, for the day when she should have to sacrifice a
Greek. The first Greek that came was her own brother, Orestes, who
had been sent by Apollo to take the image of Artemis and bear it
to Attica, where it should no more be stained with human
sacrifice.
If we try to turn from these myths to the historical facts that
underlay them, we may conjecture that there were three goddesses
of the common Aegean type, worshipped in different places. At
Brauron and elsewhere there was Iphigenia ('Birth-mighty'); at
Halae there was the Tauropolos ('the Bull-rider,' like Europa, who
rode on the horned Moon); among the savage and scarcely known
Tauri there was some goddess to whom shipwrecked strangers were
sacrificed. Lastly there came in the Olympian Artemis. Now all
these goddesses (except possibly the Taurian, of whom we know
little) were associated with the Moon and with child-birth, and
with rites for sacrificing or redeeming the first-born. Naturally
enough, therefore, they were all gradually absorbed by the
prevailing worship of Artemis. Tauropolis became an epithet of
Artemis, Iphigenia became her priestess and 'Keybearer.' And the
word 'Tauropolis,' which had become obscure, was explained as a
reference to the Tauri. The old rude image of Tauropolis had come
from the Tauri, and the strange ritual was descended from their
bloody rites. So the Taurian goddess must be Artemis too. The
tendency of ancient polytheism, when it met with some alien
religion, was not to treat the alien gods as entirely new persons,
but assuming the real and obvious existence of their own gods, to
inquire by what names and with what ritual the strangers
worshipped them.
As usual in Euripides, the central character of this play is a
woman, and a woman most unsparingly yet lovingly studied.
Iphigenia is no mere 'sympathetic heroine.' She is a worthy member
of her great but sinister house; a haggard and exiled woman,
eating out her heart in two conflicting emotions: intense longing
for home and all that she had loved in childhood, and bitter self-
pitying rage against 'her murderers.' The altar of Aulis is
constantly in her thoughts. She does not know whether to hate her
father, but at least she can with a clear conscience hate all the
rest of those implicated, Calchas, Odysseus, Menelaus, and most
fiercely, though somewhat unjustly, Helen. All the good women in
Euripides go wild at the name of Helen. Iphigenia broods on her
wrongs till she can see nothing else; she feels as if she hated
all Greeks, and lived only for revenge, for the hope of some day
slaughtering Greeks at her altar, as pitilessly as they
slaughtered her at Aulis. She knows how horrible this state of
mind is, but she is now "turned to stone, and has no pity left in
her." Then the Greeks come; and even before she knows who they
really are, the hard shell of her bitterness slowly yields. Her
heart goes out to them; she draws Orestes against his will into
talk; she insists on pitying him, insists on his pitying her; and
eventually determines, come what may, that she will save at least
the one stranger that she has talked with most. Presently comes
the discovery who the strangers are; and she is at once ready to
die with them or for them.
As for the scene in which Iphigenia befools Thoas, my moral
feelings may be obtuse, but I certainly cannot feel the slightest
compunction or shock at the heavy lying. Which of us would not
expect at least as much from his own sister, if it lay with her to
save him from the altars of Benin or Ashanti? I suspect that the
good people who lament over "the low standard of truthfulness
shown by even the most enlightened pagans" have either forgotten
the days when they read stories of adventure, or else have not, in
reading this scene, realised properly the strain of hairbreadth
peril that lies behind the comedy of it. A single slip in
Iphigenia's tissue of desperate improvisations would mean death,
and not to herself alone. One feels rather sorry for Thoas,
certainly, and he is a very fine fellow in his way; but a person
who insists on slaughtering strangers cannot expect those
strangers or their friends to treat him with any approach to
candour.
The two young men come nearer to mere ideal heroes de roman than
any other characters in Euripides. They are surprisingly handsome
and brave and unselfish and everything that they should be; and
they stand out like heroes against the mob of cowardly little
Taurians in the Herdsman's speech. Yet they have none of the
unreality that is usual in such figures. The shadow of madness and
guilt hanging over Orestes makes a difference. At his first
entrance, when danger is still far off, he is a mass of broken
nerves; he depends absolutely on Pylades. In the later scenes,
when they are face to face with death, the underlying strength of
the son of the Great King asserts itself and makes one understand
why, for all his madness, Orestes is the chief, and Pylades only
the devoted follower.
Romantic plays with happy endings are almost of necessity inferior
in artistic value to true tragedies. Not, one would hope, simply
because they end happily; happiness in itself is certainly not
less beautiful than grief; but because a tragedy in its great
moments can generally afford to be sincere, while romantic plays
live in an atmosphere of ingenuity and make-believe. The Iphigenia
is not of the same order as The Trojan Women. Yet it is a
delightful play; subtle, ever-changing, full of movement and
poignancy. The recognition scene became to Aristotle a model of
what such a scene should be; and the long passage before it, from
the entrance of the two princes onward, seems to me one of the
most skilful and fascinating in Greek drama.
And after all the adventure of Euripides is not quite like that of
the average romantic writer. It is shot through by reflection, by
reality and by sadness. There is a shadow that broods over the
Iphigenia, though it is not the shadow of death. It is exile,
homesickness. Iphigenia, Orestes, the Women of the Chorus, are all
exiles, all away from their heart's home, among savage people and
cruel gods. They wait on the shore while the sea-birds take wing
for Hellas, out beyond the barrier of the Dark-Blue Rocks and the
great stretches of magical and 'unfriended' sea. Nearly all the
lyrics are full of sea-light and the clash of waters, and the
lyrics are usually the very soul of Euripidean tragedy.
G. M.
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
IPHIGENIA, eldest daughter of Agamemnon, King of Argos; supposed
to have been sacrificed by him to Artemis at Aulis.
ORESTES, her brother; pursued by Furies for killing his mother,
Clytemnestra, who had murdered Agamemnon.
PYLADES, Prince of Phocis, friend to Orestes.
THOAS, King of Tauris, a savage country beyond the Symplegades.
A HERDSMAN.
A MESSENGER.
CHORUS of Captive Greek Women, handmaids to Iphigenia.
The Goddess PALLAS ATHENA.
The play was first performed between the years 414 and 412 B.C.
THE IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
[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 from the Temple.]
IPHIGENIA.
Child of the man of torment and of pride
Tantalid Pelops bore a royal bride
On flying steeds from Pisa. Thence did spring
Atreus: from Atreus, linked king with king,
Menelaus, Agamemnon. His am I
And Clytemnestra's child: whom cruelly
At Aulis, where the strait of shifting blue
Frets with quick winds, for Helen's sake he slew,
Or thinks to have slain; such sacrifice he swore
To Artemis on that deep-bosomed shore.
For there Lord Agamemnon, hot with joy
To win for Greece the crown of conquered Troy,
For Menelaus' sake through all distress
Pursuing Helen's vanished loveliness,
Gathered his thousand ships from every coast
Of Hellas: when there fell on that great host
Storms and despair of sailing. Then the King
Sought signs of fire, and Calchas answering
Spake thus: "O Lord of Hellas, from this shore
No ship of thine may move for evermore,
Till Artemis receive in gift of blood
Thy child, Iphigenia. Long hath stood
Thy vow, to pay to Her that bringeth light
Whatever birth most fair by day or night
The year should bring. That year thy queen did bear
A child--whom here I name of all most fair.
See that she die."
So from my mother's side
By lies Odysseus won me, to be bride
In Aulis to Achilles. When I came,
They took me and above the altar flame
Held, and the sword was swinging to the gash,
When, lo, out of their vision in a flash
Artemis rapt me, leaving in my place
A deer to bleed; and on through a great space
Of shining sky upbore and in this town
Of Tauris the Unfriended set me down;
Where o'er a savage people savagely
King Thoas rules. This is her sanctuary
And I her priestess. Therefore, by the rite
Of worship here, wherein she hath delight--
Though fair in naught but name. ... But Artemis
Is near; I speak no further. Mine it is
To consecrate and touch the victim's hair;
Doings of blood unspoken are the care
Of others, where her inmost chambers lie.
Ah me!
But what dark dreams, thou clear and morning sky,
I have to tell thee, can that bring them ease!
Meseemed in sleep, far over distant seas,
I lay in Argos, and about me slept
My maids: and, lo, the level earth was swept
With quaking like the sea. Out, out I fled,
And, turning, saw the cornice overhead
Reel, and the beams and mighty door-trees down
In blocks of ruin round me overthrown.
One single oaken pillar, so I dreamed,
Stood of my father's house; and hair, meseemed,
Waved from its head all brown: and suddenly
A human voice it had, and spoke. And I,
Fulfilling this mine office, built on blood
Of unknown men, before that pillar stood,
And washed him clean for death, mine eyes astream
With weeping.
And this way I read my dream.
Orestes is no more: on him did fall
My cleansing drops.--The pillar of the hall
Must be the man first-born; and they, on whom
My cleansing falls, their way is to the tomb.
Therefore to my dead brother will I pour
Such sacrifice, I on this bitter shore
And he beyond great seas, as still I may,
With all those maids whom Thoas bore away
In war from Greece and gave me for mine own.
But wherefore come they not? I must be gone
And wait them in the temple, where I dwell.
[She goes into the Temple.]
VOICE.
Did some one cross the pathway? Guard thee well.
ANOTHER VOICE.
I am watching. Every side I turn mine eye.
(Enter ORESTES and PYLADES. Their dress shows fhey
are travellers ORESTES is shaken and distraught.)
ORESTES.
How, brother? And is this the sanctuary
At last, for which we sailed from Argolis?
PYLADES.
For sure, Orestes. Seest thou not it is?
ORESTES.
The altar, too, where Hellene blood is shed.
PYLADES.
How like long hair those blood-stains, tawny red!
ORESTES.
And spoils of slaughtered men--there by the thatch.
PYLADES.
Aye, first-fruits of the harvest, when they catch
Their strangers!--'Tis a place to search with care
[He searches, while ORESTES sits.]
ORESTES.
O God, where hast thou brought me? What new snare
Is this?--I slew my mother; I avenged
My father at thy bidding; I have ranged
A homeless world, hunted by shapes of pain,
And circling trod in mine own steps again.
At last I stood once more before thy throne
And cried thee question, what thing should be done
To end these miseries, wherein I reel
Through Hellas, mad, lashed like a burning wheel;
And thou didst bid me seek ... what land but this
Of Tauri, where thy sister Artemis
Her altar hath, and seize on that divine
Image which fell, men say, into this shrine
From heaven. This I must seize by chance or plot
Or peril--clearer word was uttered not--
And bear to Attic earth. If this be done,
I should have peace from all my malison.
Lo, I have done thy will. I have pierced the seas
Where no Greek man may live.--Ho, Pylades,
Sole sharer of my quest: hast seen it all?
What can we next? Thou seest this circuit wall
Enormous? Must we climb the public stair,
With all men watching? Shall we seek somewhere
Some lock to pick, some secret bolt or bar--
Of all which we know nothing? Where we are,
If one man mark us, if they see us prize
The gate, or think of entrance anywise,
'Tis death.--We still have time to fly for home:
Back to the galley quick, ere worse things come!
PYLADES.
To fly we dare not, brother. 'Twere a thing
Not of our custom; and ill work, to bring
God's word to such reviling.--Let us leave
The temple now, and gather in some cave
Where glooms the cool sea ripple. But not where
The ship lies; men might chance to see her there
And tell some chief; then certain were our doom.
But when the fringed eye of Night be come
Then we must dare, by all ways foul or fine,
To thieve that wondrous Image from its shrine.
Ah, see; far up, between each pair of beams
A hollow one might creep through! Danger gleams
Like sunshine to a brave man's eyes, and fear
Of what may be is no help anywhere.
ORESTES.
Aye; we have never braved these leagues of way
To falter at the end. See, I obey
Thy words. They are ever wise. Let us go mark
Some cavern, to lie hid till fall of dark.
God will not suffer that bad things be stirred
To mar us now, and bring to naught the word
Himself hath spoke. Aye, and no peril brings
Pardon for turning back to sons of kings.
[They go out towards the shore. After they
are gone, enter gradually the WOMEN]
OF THE CHORUS.
CHORUS.
Peace! Peace upon all who dwell
By the Sister Rocks that clash in the swell
Of the Friendless Seas.
O Child of Leto, thou,
Dictynna mountain-born,
To the cornice gold-inlaid
To the pillared sanctities,
We come in the cold of morn,
We come with virgin brow,
Pure as our oath was sworn,
Handmaids of thine handmaid
Who holdeth the stainless keys,
From Hellas, that once was ours,
We come before thy gate,
From the land of the western seas,
The horses and the towers,
The wells and the garden trees,
And the seats where our fathers sate.
LEADER.
What tidings, ho? With what intent
Hast called me to thy shrine and thee,
O child of him who crossed the sea
To Troy with that great armament,
The thousand prows, the myriad swords?
I come, O child of Atreid Lords.
[IPHIGENIA, followed by ATTENDANTS, comes from the Temple.]
IPHIGENIA.
Alas, O maidens mine,
I am filled full of tears:
My heart filled with the beat
Of tears, as of dancing feet,
A lyreless joyless line,
And music meet for the dead.
For a whisper is in mine ears,
By visions borne on the breath
Of the Night that now is fled,
Of a brother gone to death.
Oh sorrow and weeping sore,
For the house that no more is,
For the dead that were kings of yore
And the labour of Argolis!
[She begins the Funeral Rite.]
O Spirit, thou unknown,
Who bearest on dark wings
My brother, my one, mine own,
I bear drink-offerings,
And the cup that bringeth ease
Flowing through Earth's deep breast;
Milk of the mountain kine,
The hallowed gleam of wine,
The toil of murmuring bees:
By these shall the dead have rest.
To an ATTENDANT.
The golden goblet let me pour,
And that which Hades thirsteth for.
O branch of Agamemnon's tree
Beneath the earth, as to one dead,
This cup of love I pour to thee.
Oh, pardon, that I may not shed
One lock of hair to wreathe thy tomb,
One tear: so far, so far am I
From what to me and thee was home,
And where in all men's fantasy,
Butchered, O God! I also lie.
CHORUS.
Woe; woe: I too with refluent melody,
An echo wild of the dirges of the Asian,
I, thy bond maiden, cry to answer thee:
The music that lieth hid in lamentation,
The song that is heard in the deep hearts of the dead,
That the Lord of dead men 'mid his dancing singeth,
And never joy-cry, never joy it bringeth;
Woe for the house of Kings in desolation,
Woe for the light of the sceptre vanished.
From kings in Argos of old, from joyous kings,
The beginning came:
Then peril swift upon peril, flame on flame:
The dark and wheeling coursers, as wild with wings,
The cry of one betrayed on a drowning shore,
The sun that blanched in heaven, the world that
changed--
Evil on evil and none alone!--deranged
By the Golden Lamb and the wrong grown ever more;
Blood following blood, sorrow on sorrow sore!
So come the dead of old, the dead in wrath,
Back on the seed of the high Tantalidae;
Surely the Spirit of Life an evil path
Hath hewed for thee.
IPHIGENIA.
From the beginning the Spirit of my life
Was an evil spirit. Alas for my mother's zone,
And the night that bare me! From the beginning
Strife,
As a book to read, Fate gave me for mine own.
They wooed a bride for the strikers down of Troy--
Thy first-born, Mother: was it for this, thy prayer?--
A hind of slaughter to die in a father's snare,
Gift of a sacrifice where none hath joy.
They set me on a royal wane;
Down the long sand they led me on,
A bride new-decked, a bride of bane,
In Aulis to the Nereid's son.
And now estranged for evermore
Beyond the far estranging foam
I watch a flat and herbless shore,
Unloved, unchilded, without home
Or city: never more to meet
For Hera's dance with Argive maids,
Nor round the loom 'mid singing sweet
Make broideries and storied braids,
Of writhing giants overthrown
And clear-eyed Pallas ... All is gone!
Red hands and ever-ringing ears:
The blood of men that friendless die,
The horror of the strangers' cry
Unheard, the horror of their tears.
But now, let even that have rest:
I weep for him in Argos slain,
The brother whom I knew, Ah me,
A babe, a flower; and yet to be--
There on his mother's arms and breast--
The crowned Orestes, lord of men!
LEADER OF THE CHORUS.
Stay, yonder from some headland of the sea
There comes--methinks a herdsman, seeking thee.
(Enter a HERDSMAN. IPHIGENIA is still on her knees.)
HERDSMAN.
Daughter of Clytemnestra and her king,
Give ear! I bear news of a wondrous thing.
IPHIGENIA.
What news, that should so mar my obsequies?
HERDSMAN.
A ship hath passed the blue Symplegades,
And here upon our coast two men are thrown,
Young, bold, good slaughter for the altar-stone
Of Artemis!
[SHE RISES.]
Make all the speed ye may;
'Tis not too much. The blood-bowl and the spray!
IPHIGENIA.
Men of what nation? Doth their habit show?
HERDSMAN.
Hellenes for sure, but that is all we know.
IPHIGENIA.
No name? No other clue thine ear could seize?
HERDSMAN.
We heard one call his comrade "Pylades."
IPHIGENIA.
Yes. And the man who spoke--his name was what?
HERDSMAN.
None of us heard. I think they spoke it not.
IPHIGENIA.
How did ye see them first, how make them fast?
HERDSMAN.
Down by the sea, just where the surge is cast ...
IPHIGENIA.
The sea? What is the sea to thee and thine?
HERDSMAN.
We came to wash our cattle in the brine.
IPHIGENIA.
Go back, and tell how they were taken; show
The fashion of it, for I fain would know
All.--'Tis so long a time, and never yet,
Never, hath Greek blood made this altar wet.
HERDSMAN.
We had brought our forest cattle where the seas
Break in long tides from the Symplegades.
A bay is there, deep eaten by the surge
And hollowed clear, with cover by the verge
Where purple-fishers camp. These twain were there
When one of mine own men, a forager,
Spied them, and tiptoed whispering back: "God save
Us now! Two things unearthly by the wave
Sitting!" We looked, and one of pious mood
Raised up his hands to heaven and praying stood:
"Son of the white Sea Spirit, high in rule,
Storm-lord Palaemon, Oh, be merciful:
Or sit ye there the warrior twins of Zeus,
Or something loved of Him, from whose great thews
Was-born the Nereids' fifty-fluted choir."
Another, flushed with folly and the fire
Of lawless daring, laughed aloud and swore
'Twas shipwrecked sailors skulking on the shore,
Our rule and custom here being known, to slay
All strangers. And most thought this was the way
To follow, and seek out for Artemis
The blood-gift of our people.
Just at this
One of the strangers started from his seat,
And stood, and upward, downward, with a beat
His head went, and he groaned, and all his arm
Trembled. Then, as a hunter gives alarm,
He shrieked, stark mad and raving: "Pylades,
Dost see her there?--And there--Oh, no one sees!--
A she-dragon of Hell, and all her head
Agape with fanged asps, to bite me dead.
She hath no face, but somewhere from her cloak
Bloweth a wind of fire and bloody smoke:
The wings' beat fans it: in her arms, Ah see!
My mother, dead grey stone, to cast on me
And crush ... Help, help! They crowd on me
behind ..."
No shapes at all were there. 'Twas his sick mind
Which turned the herds that lowed and barking hounds
That followed, to some visionary sounds
Of Furies. For ourselves, we did but sit
And watch in silence, wondering if the fit
Would leave him dead. When suddenly out shone
His sword, and like a lion he leaped upon
Our herds, to fight his Furies! Flank and side
He stabbed and smote them, till the foam was dyed
Red at the waves' edge. Marry, when we saw
The cattle hurt and falling, no more law
We gave, but sprang to arms and blew the horn
For help--so strong they looked and nobly born
For thralls like us to meet, that pair unknown.