Iphigenia in Aulis or Iphigenia at Aulis (; variously translated, including the Latin Iphigenia in Aulide) is the last of the extant works by the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after Orestes, and 406 BC, the year of Euripides' death, the play was first produced the following year in a trilogy with The Bacchae and Alcmaeon in Corinth by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger, and won first place at the City Dionysia in Athens. These latter events are central to several of the Greek tragedies such as Euripides' Hecuba and The Trojan Women, as well as Aeschylus' play Agamemnon.

The conflict in Iphigenia at Aulis also focuses closely on Iphigenia's initial resistance to the idea of dying/being killed and her relationship with her father and, to a lesser degree, on a young Achilles, who is drawn into the situation by Agamemnon. Also known to the audience of Athenians who witnessed the play's performance would have been the fact that, as a result of Agamemnon's actions, after the war he will be killed upon his homecoming by his wife, Clytemnestra, and that she in turn will be killed by her son, Orestes, in order to avenge his father. All appear in Iphigenia at Aulis. "Paley agrees with Porson in regarding the rest of the play after Iphigenia's exit [lines 1510 to the end of the play] as the work of an interpolator". A fragment of the play may indicate that Artemis appeared to console Clytemnestra and assure her that her daughter had not been sacrificed after all, but if this is a surviving reference to Euripides' original ending, that ending is not extant.

Associated myths

The first lines of the Chorus (Women of Chalcis) are:

"To the sandy beach of sea-coast Aulis I came after a voyage through the tides of Euripus, leaving Chalcis on its narrow firth, my city which feedeth the waters of far famed Arethusa near the sea,..."

About the Arethusa myth:

"The Sicilian well Arethusa, ...was believed to have a subterraneous communication with the river Alpheius, in Peloponnesus. According to Pausanias, Alpheius was a passionate hunter and fell in love with the nymph Arethusa, but she fled from him to the island of Ortygia near Syracuse, and metamorphosed herself into a well, whereupon Alpheius became a river, which flowing from Peloponnesus under the sea to Ortygia, there united its waters with those of the well Arethusa. This story is related somewhat differently by Ovid. Arethusa, a fair nymph, once while bathing in the river Alpheius in Arcadia, was surprised and pursued by the god; but Artemis took pity upon her and changed her into a well, which flowed under the earth to the island of Ortygia."

Cultural influence

The play inspired the tragedy Iphigénie (1674) by Jean Racine and was the basis of several operas in the eighteenth century, using librettos that drew from both Euripedes's and Racine's versions and had various plot variants. The earliest extant libretto is by Christian Heinrich Postel, Die wunderbar errettete Iphigenia, set by Reinhard Keiser in 1699. The most popular libretto was Apostolo Zeno's Ifigenia in Aulide (1718), set by Antonio Caldara (1718), Giuseppe Maria Orlandini (1732), Giovanni Porta (1738), Nicola Porpora (1735), Girolamo Abos (1752), Giuseppe Sarti (1777), Angelo Tarchi (1785), and Giuseppe Giordani (1786). Other libretti include Ifigenia by Matteo Verazi (set by Niccolò Jommelli, 1751), that of Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi (set by Ferdinando Bertoni, 1762 and Carlo Franchi, 1766), that of Luigi Serio (set by Vicente Martín y Soler, 1779 and Alessio Prati, 1784), and that of Ferdinando Moretti (set by Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli, 1787 and Luigi Cherubini, 1788). However, the best-known opera today is Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide (1774).

Iphigenia in Aulis has had a significant influence on modern art. Greek director Michael Cacoyannis based his 1977 film Iphigenia (starring Irene Papas as Clytemnestra) on Euripides's script. The play also formed the basis for the 2003 novel The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth, as well as the P. D. Q. Bach cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn. Neil LaBute drew heavily on the story of Iphigenia for his short play Iphigenia in Orem, one of his Bash series.

US Latina playwright Caridad Svich's 2004 multimedia play Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (a rave fable) is published in the international theatre journal TheatreForum, and also in the anthology Divine Fire: Eight Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks published in 2005 by BackStage Books. The play re-sets Iphigenia's story in and around Ciudad Juárez and the murders of the Women of Juárez.

Charles L. Mee, an American playwright, adapted the text for the modern theatre through his project, "The Re-Making Project". Mee's "Iphigenia 2.0," which was inspired by Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis, incorporates some texts from Alan Stuart-Smyth, Jim Graves, Jim Morris, Gaby Bashan, Richard Holmes, Richard Heckler, Dave Grossman, Wilfred Owen, and Anthony Swofford. The New York World Premiere of this version of "Iphigenia 2.0" was originally produced by Signature Theatre Company, New York City, and was described in the New York Times review as a "proudly unfaithful and rather tedious version of Euripides' "Iphigenia at Aulis." "

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos based his 2017 film The Killing of a Sacred Deer loosely on the story of Agamemnon.

Image Comics plans a graphic novel version of the play to be released in May 2022, written by Edward Einhorn and with art by Eric Shanower.

Themes

Gender Roles: The role of gender in Iphigenia in Aulis becomes very clear as the work progresses. Ancient Greek culture is very male-dominated, with a majority of Greek warriors and heroes being of that gender. Women in Greek culture had no political rights or rights over their own bodies - their job was to bear children and listen to their husbands (or their fathers, if they are unmarried). In Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia herself makes this difference very clear. Iphigenia's father, Agamemnon, summons her to Aulis, under the false guise that she is to marry one of the heroes there, Achilles. As a woman, she herself has no true choice in who she marries, as it is her father's job to select and approve of a man for her marriage. Even when Achilles and Agamemnon reveal the truth, Iphigenia knows that she has no choice, so she is forced to beg her father to change his mind. Eventually, she concludes that her sacrifice would be worth the furthering of the war. She herself notes that it would be "better" her life than the life of all the soldiers gathered there, as a woman's life bears a lot less value than the life of a man. She feels obligated to make the decision she makes because of the subservient role she is expected to play to the men in her life. Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis highlights the importance of gender roles in both the decision Iphigenia makes and in how she is treated by her father, Agamemnon.

Sacrifice and Duty: In Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia is willing to make a great sacrifice to further the Trojan War, a war that she herself has no involvement in. Warfare was a major part of Ancient Greek life, and a source of great renown. Many major Greek artworks depicted the Greek warrior or the art of warfare (art including buildings, statues, coins, and vases). In war, a major theme is sacrifice - it was a great honor to fall in battle as a hero. Iphigenia recognizes this when she chooses to make the sacrifice so that the Greek warriors could sail onwards to Troy. She bears a great sense of duty to her country, and she chooses to lay her life down not for her sake, but for the sake of the war and her country. She only asks that her name is written in history for her great sacrifice, although she does not get this. In some translations, the Gods see her sense of duty and her willingness to die an honorable death, and she is saved by Artemis, who puts a deer in her place at the sacrificial table. In these versions, as a reward for her selflessness, Iphigenia is taken to Tauris by Artemis, where she is made a priestess at Artemis' temple.

Translations

  • Jane Lumley (1537–1578), ca. 1555 (first published in 1909)
  • Robert Potter, 1781 – verse, full text
  • T. A. Buckley, 1850 – prose
  • , 1891 – prose
  • Arthur Way, 1912 – verse
  • Florence M. Stawell, 1929 – verse
  • Moses Hadas and John McLean, 1936 - prose
  • Charles R. Walker, 1958
  • W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock Jr., 1978 – verse
  • Paul Roche, 1998 – verse (Euripides: Ten Plays (Signet))
  • Mary-Kay Gamel, 1999 – prose
  • James Morwood, 2002 – verse
  • Don Taylor, 2004
  • John Davie, 2005 – prose
  • George Theodoridis, 2007
  • Edward Einhorn, 2013
  • Anne Lill, 2013 - Estonian, received Alexander Kurtna Award
  • Nicolas Billon & Roger Beck, 2010
  • Christopher Collard & James Morwood, 2017 – verse
  • Andy Hinds, with Martine Cuypers 2017
  • Brian Vinero, 2018 – rhymed verse
  • Rachel Hadas, 2018 - verse

References

  • (multiple English translations)
  • Text at The Internet Classics Archive
  • Text at The Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University