We turn back to the Trojan legend now, and to two Euripidean plays which in some sense round off the Orestean story. We had to leave that story at a ragged edge—the murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes in revenge for the death of Agamemnon. We could not go on to the third drama of the Æschylean trilogy, to follow the unhappy youth as he fled in remorse to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and thence to Athens, seeking to appease his mother’s Furies. But if we had done so we should have found the whole theme brought to a calm and beautiful conclusion: Orestes cleansed by suffering and set free from guilt by Athena; and the avenging Furies changed into Spirits of Mercy.

Euripides, however, who took so many subjects for his drama from the Trojan cycle and always gave them new significance, in this case chose variants of the legend and wove them into a story which was entirely fresh. So that the Iphigenia in Tauris, with which we are chiefly concerned now, shows Orestes still fleeing before the Erinnyes; and carries the tale to another and much more exciting conclusion. Indeed, the peculiar charm of this tragedy is that it is not really tragedy at all, but a thrilling adventure-play. It reminds us of the Odyssey, with its flavour of the sea, the wistful note that haunts it and its spice of physical peril; only, this is the work of a poet who adds high dramatic values to the delight of the story, with a lyric note of enchanting beauty, and penetrating thought.

Characteristically, when Euripides took up this part of the Orestean legend, it was not so much the man Orestes in whom he was interested, as the woman Iphigenia; with the result that we have two dramas called by her name and in which she is the protagonist. Both were produced late in the poet’s life, the Iphigenia in Aulis being probably his last work. It contains the earlier part of the heroine’s story—the sacrifice of the virgin-martyr at Aulis; and the great new feature of it, her rescue by Artemis just as the knife was falling to her throat, was perhaps the poet’s own invention. There is no hint of it in Æschylus. To Clytemnestra, the murder of her first-born child Iphigenia was the crime which turned her life to bitterness and armed her against Agamemnon. He had beguiled her to send the child—for she was but a mere girl—to Aulis, for marriage with the splendid young hero Achilles. And then, at the bidding of a soothsayer, he had ruthlessly slain his daughter on the altar of Artemis; and sailed away to Troy.

Those are the facts at the heart of the mystery which is Clytemnestra; but when we come to the Iphigenia in Aulis we find some different data and a far different interpretation. Agamemnon there is almost pitiably human, driven by complex motives first to consent to Iphigenia’s death, then to recant in horror, and finally to yield to forces which he could not control. Iphigenia, too, is made at once nobler and more tragic in the idea of a willing sacrifice—giving herself up, after the first shock of terror, to die freely for her country’s good. And in her rescue by the goddess there is added an element of marvel and mystery, which is at the same time a protest against a form of religion so inhuman.

The Iphigenia in Tauris opens at a period many years later.

Troy had fallen. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra were both dead in the manner we know of; and Orestes was a fugitive, seeking through many lands to expiate the crime of mother-murder. There had been laid upon him at last, as the only means to peace, the command of Apollo to make his way to the savage land of the Tauri. He was to seize and bring from the temple of Artemis there a certain statue of the goddess which had fallen from heaven long before, and which the people of the land were dishonouring by human sacrifice. Every stranger cast upon their shores was slain at the shrine of the goddess; and Orestes ran the risk of almost certain death in making the venture. But he had a solemn promise from Apollo; and the reward would be sweet indeed. He would be cleansed of the crime, and set free from these haunting shapes of remorse which sometimes drove him to madness. Moreover, he would rid the name of Hellas from the stain which lay on its religion through the barbarous practices of the Tauri. So he and his devoted comrade Pylades sailed for those inhospitable waters.

But Destiny was guiding them to something stranger than they had either hoped or dreaded. For this wild land, fiercely guarded from approach by the Rocky Gateway of the SymplÊgades, was the country to which Artemis had carried Iphigenia from the altar in Aulis. And in the temple where they must seek the sacred statue, the daughter of Agamemnon was even now a priestess.

The years had passed wearily since Iphigenia first found herself a captive in Tauris. Completely shut off from the world by the sea which foamed round that desolate coast, no word ever came to her from her home in Argos; and she could make no sign to the friends who believed her dead long since. She hated this savage people, and Thoas their king, and the hideous sacrifices at which she had to perform the cleansing rite. Sometimes she would grow sick at their brutality, and wild with loneliness and longing to escape. Then sceptical thoughts would come about the deity who could accept such worship; and it would seem to her better to have died at Aulis than to have been saved for such slow misery. At other times she would brood over her short sweet girlhood and its bitter ending, gone irrevocably from the moment of her father’s fraud; and bitterness would overwhelm her against Agamemnon, and the Seer who counselled him, and the chieftains who persuaded him; but above all against Helen, for whose sake the war was made.

So youth stole away, taking with it, as Iphigenia sadly thought, all the high things that inspire a fair young soul—the shining ideal, the simple and ardent faith, the generous emotion that leaps to sympathy and service. And at the moment of the opening of the play, when the ship that bears Orestes is being run ashore at Tauris, Iphigenia stands before her temple feeling hard and hopeless, dispossessed of all that is dear in life, and with every illusion long since fled.

It is early morning, and Iphigenia has just emerged from the temple. There are a few lines of formal exposition: an involuntary cry of disgust at the blood-stained altar that is insulting the eye of day; and then a flow of troubled speech.

In the night that has just passed, she had dreamed of her home in Argos. She seemed to lie asleep there, with her maids around her, when suddenly an earthquake shook the palace; and running out of doors, she saw the great building reel and fall. Only one pillar remained; and as she watched it, she saw that brown hair waved about its head, and she heard it speak with a human voice. Then, in the strange confusion of dreams, she found herself fulfilling the office that she bears here in Tauris; and she washed the pillar clean for death, as it was her duty to wash the victims for the sacrifice.

With pathetic readiness, Iphigenia has accepted the dream as an evil omen. The pillar of her father’s house must mean his son Orestes, whom she left a child in Argos all those years ago. Those whom she cleanses are doomed to die. What can the dream mean, therefore, save that her brother is dead? The conviction is so strong upon her that she at once decides to prepare the funeral rite.

But hardly has she gone upon her errand when there is a sound of muffled voices approaching, and two youths enter, treading cautiously, and peering for danger on every side. They are Orestes and his friend Pylades, who have found their way up from the shore, and are searching for some means to carry out the god’s command. As they come before the temple, and note the grim signs of slain men on the altar and hanging from the roof, they realize that this is the very centre of their quest; and that they have now to face the most deadly peril of all.

At this crucial moment, however, when all their hopes depend on a calm nerve and rapid thought and resolute action, an approaching fit of madness begins to shake Orestes. With strength sapped and courage broken, he falls upon a seat while Pylades goes to reconnoitre. In his weakened state he is overcome by the terror of the place and their enormous danger; and when his friend returns, he implores him to fly back to the galley. But Pylades has hopeful tidings. He has found a spot in this almost impregnable temple where an entry might be forced by courage and daring; and heartening Orestes with the news, he leads him away, to hide till nightfall in a cavern by the seashore.

As they go out of sight, the Chorus enters, singing a hymn to Artemis, the mountain-born child of Leto. They are Greek women, captured in war by Thoas and given by him to the priestess for her handmaidens. They come wonderingly, in answer to Iphigenia’s urgent summons; and are amazed when she appears with every sign of grief, followed by attendants who carry libations for the dead. In answer to a question from their leader, the priestess tells them of her ominous dream and of the funeral rite that she is about to perform for her brother.

From each attendant she takes in turn a golden goblet containing a libation of wine and milk and honey; and as she pours them into the altar for the dead, she and her women alternately chant a threnody for Orestes. They sing of the old dark story of Agamemnon’s house, from its beginning in the sin of Pelops down to what was for Iphigenia its last and worst enormity, the sacrifice at Aulis. And as their voices rise and fall in the long ceremonial, while Iphigenia is still upon her knees before the altar, there is a violent interruption. A herdsman bursts eagerly upon them, with news that shatters the mournful beauty of their rite.

The priestess rises, impatient at this sudden recall to her hated duty, and the jarring note that has broken their obsequies. The man and his ugly zeal are a complete offence to her, and she answers him curtly. Who and what are these men he speaks of? At his reply, however, annoyance gives place to astonishment, curiosity, and a strange mingling of joy and pain. For he tells that the men are Greeks; and never yet, in all the dreary time of her captivity, has one of her countrymen landed upon these shores.

Once or twice, in her darkest hours, she had longed and prayed for such a day as this—for fate to send some Hellenic victim to her altar. She had thought she would be glad: that it would be a keen and satisfying pleasure to take a Greek life for all that the Greeks had made her suffer. But now that she stands face to face with her desire, there is a tumult of emotion within her in which bitterness hardly shares.

She questions the herdsman closely of the name and appearance of the strangers. One is called Pylades, he says; but the other’s name he did not catch. And at Iphigenia’s command, he goes over the whole story of their capture. He and his companions were washing their cattle in the sea, when one of them had spied two strangers sitting on the beach in a little bay. They were young, handsome and apparently noble; and there was something in their fine physique and sudden unaccountable appearance in that lonely spot which made one of his fellows cry out that they were gods. But another jeered and said most likely they were shipwrecked sailors who knew the custom of the country and were trying to escape it; and just at that moment a strange thing happened. One of the youths was suddenly seized with a fit of madness. They saw him spring from his seat and beat his head up and down, while he shrieked wildly to his comrade:

The distraught fancy of Orestes saw the cattle and their watch-dogs as the pursuing Furies of his mother; and quick as a flash, before his friend could intervene, he had drawn his sword and was slashing right and left amongst the helpless beasts. The herdsmen blew their horns; and soon a crowd had gathered and were pelting the strangers with stones. While the fit of madness lasted Pylades guarded Orestes from attack; but it passed quickly, and the two youths fought together gallantly for life. Not one of the missiles struck home, the goddess, it seemed, taking care to save her prey. But at last they were surrounded, and the swords beaten out of their hands.

All through the tale Iphigenia had listened in pity for the brave youths so cruelly overborne; and now she is suddenly brought back to the thought of the sacrifice and of her part in it. There is a shudder of horror too, when the herdsman reminds her of her prayer in past times for just such a capture as this. She restrains herself with an effort, and coldly bids the man fetch the prisoners; but no sooner has he gone than the tumult of emotion within rushes into speech. Memories of the old times: of the bridal rites that were only a snare; and of the poor timid child that she once had been, imploring her father to be merciful. Thoughts, too, of shipwrecked men and of all the dreadful sacrifices which she cannot and will not believe that the goddess delights in. And above all, the certainty she feels that Orestes is dead; and which she says has turned her heart to stone and made her pitiless.

So she thinks she will not falter: that though she may have shrunk from the task in former times, this last pain has made her cruel. Yet, when the strangers are brought in, all the hardness melts in a moment.

Orestes answers, a little irritated at the sight of her tears. Whoever this stranger woman is, it is hardly kind of her, he thinks, to unman them thus by pity; and he bids her cease. They know the form of worship of the country, and are prepared to die.

Iphigenia checks her tears, but she cannot control her desire for news of home and friends. So, rather heartlessly as the prisoners think, she presses eager questions on them—for their name and parentage and city. To Orestes it seems that she is prompted by the shallowest curiosity, and he flings curt phrases at her, refusing the information. But the clamour at her heart will not be silenced by the rebuke: her own pride and the dignity of her office, and every other consideration but this craving for word from Hellas, go down before it. She pleads that she at least may know what land of Greece they hail from; and grudgingly, in the fewest words possible, Orestes answers that Argos is his land, and his home is at MycenÆ. His words evoke an exclamation of joy from Iphigenia; and as his reluctance gradually breaks up under the spell of her sincerity, he is drawn on to answer her on all those matters which, unknown to either, are of such weighty interest to both.

She asks about Troy, and the fate of Helen: of Calchas, that evil prophet who had bidden her father slay his child: of Achilles, her promised bridegroom, dead long since outside the walls of Troy. And Orestes in his turn begins to wonder who may be this searching questioner, who asks so feelingly of the things that lie closest to his heart. She tells him that she is Greek; and that explains a good deal. But when she comes nearer home, and asks for news of Agamemnon, it is only her evident emotion that wins a reply. Bit by bit she learns that Agamemnon is dead by the hand of Clytemnestra; and a cry escapes her which is full of the sense of the tragedy from the woman’s standpoint:

Orestes, too, is moved, and begs her, shrinking from further questions which he sees are coming, to desist. One word more, she entreats—what of Clytemnestra? And when the youth, in slow words that seem wrung from him in pain, tells that the great queen was slain by her son in vengeance for his father’s death, it is again the woman’s judgment that springs to utterance:

So little by little the tragic events that have filled the years of her exile are related in this wonderful dialogue, where every sentence that each speaker utters carries a significance to which the other has no clue. All through the scene the underlying dramatic irony is profoundly felt—the ignorance of each of the other’s identity; and at moments one holds the breath in suspense. At one time the unknown priestess speaks of the Greek king’s daughter who was slain at Aulis; and when the stranger answers that of course nothing more was heard of her, she having died at Aulis, Iphigenia sighs:

Again, remembering her ominous dream, she asks what has become of Agamemnon’s son, and receives the reply:

So her dream was a lie, she muses, thankfully; and falls silent while the stranger, whose reserve has vanished now, breaks into bitter railing against the gods who have brought him to this pass. Iphigenia scarcely hears him. Relief and gratitude for the fact that Orestes is living: renewed pity for the strangers’ doom and some wistful tenderness for him to whom she has spoken, fill her mind and prompt her to rapid thought.

Suppose she were to rescue them, she ponders, or one of them? And suppose, in doing so, she could bring help to herself from the brother in Argos who believes her dead? Suddenly she turns upon Orestes and begins rapidly to unfold a plan. She knows a way to save him; and she will undertake to give him life in return for a promise. He must pledge himself to carry a letter which she will give him to her friends in MycenÆ.

So her proposal runs to the amazed and grateful youths; but a difficulty instantly arises. Orestes will not by any means consent that Pylades shall be left behind to die. His friend is very dear to him, he says: let Pylades go free and bear the message. The priestess agrees, with a word of admiration for his generous love; and goes into the temple to fetch the tablet, which had been written for her long ago, by a prisoner taken by king Thoas.

While Iphigenia is gone, the friends take a tender farewell of each other. Pylades entreats Orestes to let him stay and die in his stead: he will have no more joy in life, he says, when he returns without his comrade; and men will scorn him for a coward. But the other puts his pleading resolutely on one side, and when the priestess returns with the tablet, both are composed and ready. She has one misgiving, however. She fears that Pylades will forget his trust once he is free of Tauris; and she requires of him an oath that her letter will be delivered. But when the oath is solemnly given, Pylades perceives a difficulty in his turn. Suppose the tablet should be lost, how could he fulfil his promise? Iphigenia sees that there is only one thing to do—she must repeat the contents of the letter, and the messenger must commit them to memory. So, speaking slowly and impressively, she begins:

Orestes and Pylades, after a wild exclamation each to the other, stand listening in bewildered joy as Iphigenia proceeds, relating the story of her rescue by Artemis, and calling upon her brother to come and save her from captivity. During the recital, they have had time to grasp the wonder of the things they have heard; but no ray of the truth has come to Iphigenia. And when Orestes, receiving the letter from the hand of Pylades, turns eagerly to embrace the sister so marvellously saved, she recoils in horror.

Iphigenia, incredulous, thinks he is mocking her. She has been so long dead to love and happiness that she cannot believe that they have come to her at last, and that this is really the brother for whom, a little while before, she had performed the funeral rite. She insists on proof of his identity; and as he tells over the little homely signs by which she may know him, her doubt slips away and she clasps him in her arms.

They cling to each other, Iphigenia oblivious of everything but her joy, and Orestes loth to recall her to a sense of their danger. Presently her thoughts come painfully back to it, fluttering wildly round each possibility of escape together, and seeing no way clear. But when Orestes tells her of his mission to carry off the statue of the goddess, the very magnitude of its daring clarifies her mind. She sees one way, and though it is not the way that she had hoped, she is ready for the sacrifice. She must secure the statue, and Orestes must escape with it to Attica, as the god commands. For herself, her part will be to stay, and by every means prevent her brother from being followed. She is sure of success in this, and though it mean death for her, it will be sweet to give herself for the peace of one so dear.

But Orestes absolutely refuses to accept his life at such a price; and they strain every nerve to contrive a scheme which will carry them to safety together. There is a suggestion to kill Thoas, but the woman who has been sheltered and protected by him will not hear of it. Again, they think of hiding in the temple until nightfall; but that is impracticable, because the guards would see and capture them. And at last Iphigenia, beating backward and forward over all the possible chances, sees a gleam of hope. Slowly and carefully she unfolds her plan. She will give out that the victims for the altar have come from Greece polluted with a mother’s blood, and that they may not be offered to the goddess until they have been cleansed in the sea. The statue, she will say, is unclean too, since one of the captives has touched it; and she will prevail upon the king to allow her to take it, with the victims, down to the seashore. The rest will be Orestes’ task; and as his ship with fifty rowers lies waiting for them in the little bay, they should be able to get away before Thoas can follow.

The scheme is at once subtle and daring, but it is their only hope of escape from awful peril; and it is hastily resolved upon. Iphigenia claims a promise of loyalty from her women, sends the prisoners away in charge of attendants, and goes into the temple for the statue. As she comes out again, bearing it in her hands, the king himself arrives. To his astonished questions, she answers as has been arranged, and no point is overlooked by her ingenuity. A herald should be sent before her, to clear the streets, and proclaim that no one must look out, or leave his house, for fear of pollution. Thoas himself, and his attendants, must veil their eyes when her procession passes; and while she is gone, the king is to purge the temple with fire in preparation for her return. Lastly, if she be a long time away, the king need not be anxious, and she must not be disturbed: the cleansing must be thoroughly performed.

The king consents without a shadow of suspicion, impressed by her piety and forethought. The prisoners are led out, and as the procession moves away, Iphigenia utters a prayer for help in her strategy and pardon for the deceit that she has practised on the king. As Thoas returns to the temple to carry out Iphigenia’s injunctions, the Chorus break into an ode in honour of Apollo and Artemis; and for a while there is no sound but the sweet rise and fall of their voices. As time slips by, bringing we know not what fortune to the fugitives, we know that the women of the Chorus, who are in the secret, are tortured by suspense. Then there is a sudden shout; and a messenger comes running from the shore and cries for entrance to the temple. The women try to turn him aside; but he batters upon the gates until Thoas throws them open, angry at the clamour.

In rapid and excited speech the man tells his errand. Let the king come at once, for he has been befooled. The cleansing was a fraud: the statue has been stolen; and the Greek princess and the two young men who were destined for the altar are even now rowing away in a boat which was awaiting them. But if the king will hasten, they may yet be caught; for at this moment they are battling with an adverse wind, and they have no knowledge of the currents of that treacherous shore.

Thoas, furious at the trap into which he has fallen, gives rapid orders: a company of herdsmen is to go to the headlands, and boats are to be put off immediately from the shore. So these crafty Greeks will be overtaken, either by sea or land; and then let them beware of a barbarian’s anger!

But suddenly, through the shouting and confusion, there is a roll of thunder and a lightning-flash; and descending through the air the goddess Athena is seen. Her voice rings out imperiously, commanding Thoas to stay his haste. Then, in the awed hush that falls she makes known the will of the gods that Orestes and his sister shall not be pursued. Fate has ordained their escape, and Thoas may not strive against it.

As for Orestes himself, Athena declares that it is laid on him to carry the rescued image of Artemis to HalÆ, on the bounds of Attica; and there it will be worshipped with curious rites designed to recall the old barbarity while condemning it. These poor Greek women must be restored to their homes; and, for that fleeing priestess, Destiny has given to her to end her days in peace and gentleness.

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