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EuripidesIphigenia in Aulis
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 410A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Euripides
The youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians (the other two were Aeschylus and Sophocles), Euripides was known for his adventurous and challenging plays. He seems to have been born on the island of Salamis, from where he moved to the nearby city of Athens to pursue a career as a tragedian. In his later years, he relocated to Macedon, where he died. There is virtually no reliable information for Euripides’ life aside from these bare facts (which may not be reliable either).
Euripides had a career that lasted some 50 years. He composed approximately 90 plays, 18 of which survive in full. Iphigenia in Aulis was first staged posthumously as part of Euripides’ final tetralogy (a set of four plays—three tragedies followed by a satyr play), which also included Euripides’ Bacchae. The tetralogy won first prize at the City Dionysia dramatic festival, one of only five tetralogies by Euripides to do so (Aeschylus, by comparison, won 13 times, and Sophocles won 18).
The text of Iphigenia in Aulis is debatable. Though the core of the tragedy was composed by Euripides, most scholars agree that much of the remaining text was composed by somebody else. It is possible that Euripides died before he could put the finishing touches on the play, and that his son (also named Euripides) polished it when he produced it after his father’s death. Much of the play is thought to have been revised much later by one or more authors. According to James Diggle, a recent editor of Euripides, the following lines of the transmitted text (totaling 1,629 lines) are “possibly” by Euripides (James Diggle, Euripidis Fabulae, Vol. 3: Helena, Phoenissae, Orestes, Bacchae, Iphigenia Aulidensis, Rhesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994):
164–230
303–403
442–535
631–738
819–918
1036–79
1120–275
1336–1401
1421–74
This is only one of several possible reconstructions of Euripides’ text, and in the end such reconstructions are purely speculative.
Literary Context: The Myth of Iphigenia
The myth of Iphigenia is part of the wider legend of the Trojan War. When Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, left her husband to run off with the Trojan prince Paris, Menelaus and his more powerful brother Agamemnon assembled a large army to sail to Troy and bring Helen back. The army, a confederation composed of many other kings, heroes, and armies of Greece, assembled with their ships at the port of Aulis. While the army was encamped, the goddess Artemis demanded that Agamemnon, the commander of the expedition, sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia in exchange for a wind to blow the fleet to Troy. This is where Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis begins.
The myth of Iphigenia was narrated in many works produced before Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, including a lost epic called the Cypria as well as poems by Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, as well as an earlier tragedy by Euripides, Iphigenia among the Taurians. Like most Greek myths, the story of Iphigenia had many forms and versions. In some accounts, Iphigenia even has a different name (such as Iphimede, Iphigone, or Iphianassa). Some specify that Artemis chooses Agamemnon’s daughter for sacrifice to punish her for an act of impiety or hubris. Perhaps the most notable divergence we see involves the ending, where some represent Iphigenia as being sacrificed according to plan and others have Artemis spare the girl at the last moment, substituting her with a deer.
The characters Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Clytemnestra, all of whom play important parts in the play, were also known from other works of ancient literature, such as the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. The familiarity of these figures becomes an important consideration when interpreting the play, especially since Euripides incorporated themes from earlier literature (such as Homer’s epics) while characterizing his storied dramatis personae, or cast of characters.
Related Titles
By Euripides
