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Concept
Iphigenia in Tauris
Summary
Iphigenia in Tauris (Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις, Iphigeneia en Taurois) is a drama by the playwright Euripides, written between 414 BC and 412 BC. It has much in common with another of Euripides's plays, Helen, as well as the lost play Andromeda, and is often described as a romance, a melodrama, a tragi-comedy or an escape play.
Although the play is generally known in English as Iphigenia in Tauris, this is, strictly speaking, the Latin title of the play (corresponding to the Greek Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις), the meaning of which is Iphigenia among the Taurians. There is no such place as "Tauris" in Euripides' play, although Goethe, in his play Iphigenie auf Tauris (on which Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride is based), ironically utilising this translation error, posits such a place. The name refers to the Crimean Peninsula (ancient Taurikḗ).
Years before the time period covered by the play, the young princess Iphigenia narrowly avoided death by sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. (See plot of Iphigenia at Aulis.) At the last moment the goddess Artemis, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, intervened and replaced Iphigenia on the altar with a deer, saving the girl and sweeping her off to the land of the Taurians. She has since been made a priestess at the temple of Artemis in Taurica, a position in which she has the gruesome task of ritually sacrificing foreigners who land on King Thoas's shores.
Iphigenia hates her forced religious servitude and is desperate to contact her family in Greece. She wants to inform them that, thanks to the miraculous swap performed by Artemis, she is still alive and wants to return to her homeland, leaving the role of high priestess to someone else. Furthermore, she has had a prophetic dream about her younger brother Orestes and believes that he is dead.
Meanwhile, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon with assistance from his friend Pylades. He becomes haunted by the Erinyes for committing the crime and goes through periodic fits of madness.
Official source
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