Iphigenia

Also known as: IPH / IPH. / IPHIGENIA / Iphigeneia · Family: Argos · Role: daughter of Clytemnestra · First appears: Aeschylus, Agamemnon — Scene 1

Iphigenia was born to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, alongside Chrysothemis, Electra, and Orestes. Before the war, Calchas declared that Artemis required her sacrifice so the Greek fleet could sail and Troy be sacked. Agamemnon therefore summoned her to Aulis under the pretense of marriage to Achilles; when the deception was exposed, Achilles vowed to protect her, while Clytemnestra learned that her husband intended to kill their daughter. Menelaus, first involved in the demand, eventually urged Agamemnon to spare her, but Odysseus was chosen to conduct her to the sacrifice.

At Aulis, Iphigenia chose to offer herself for Greece, asking Clytemnestra not to hate Agamemnon and to raise Orestes. “I have determined to die, and this I would fain do gloriously, I mean, by dismissing all ignoble thoughts.” She went willingly to the meadow of Artemis, where Artemis replaced her with a stag and carried her to Tauris, though other accounts describe Agamemnon as having sacrificed her at Aulis to secure favorable winds.

In Tauris, Artemis installed Iphigenia as priestess, giving her the duty of sacrifice. When Orestes and Pylades were brought to her, she recognized her surviving brother and devised a purification ruse, claiming that the prisoners and the sacred image had to be taken outside the temple. She escaped with Orestes and the image, resisted Thoas’s pursuit, and was directed by Athena to become guardian of Artemis’s temple at Brauron. “Orestes, her brother, that you may know, the son of Agamemnon, I, having taken this my sister, whom I had lost from my house, am bearing her off.”