Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. According to the story, Agamemnon committed a mistake and had to sacrifice Iphigenia to Artemis to appease her. [1] There are different versions of the story. According to one side of the story, before Agamemnon could sacrifice her, Artemis saved her and replaced her with a deer on the altar. In the other version, Agamemnon actually went through with the sacrifice. The different versions aid in the different depictions of Iphigenia.
The sacrifice of Iphigenia is immortalized on many different mediums. Vases are a common base for the story, but there are mosaics, paintings, and written works from every era illustrating the myth of Iphigenia. The most common scene depicted in the different visual media of Iphigenia is when she about to be offered up to Artemis on the altar.
Pausanias was a traveler who wrote the Description of Greece which depicted his accounts of what he has seen on mainland Greece. [2] He recorded a few depictions of the death of Iphigenia. He mentions that the temple of Artemis was where the sacrifice was to take place. He goes on to describe the temple of Artemis after its destruction. [3] Pausanias then gives an example of an artistic depiction of Iphigenia that was found in Catalonia. In the mosaic, Iphigenia is being led to the altar and it is seen that Artemis is in the back waiting and holding a deer to replace Iphigenia with.
Pliny the Elder was a Roman scholar who wrote about the great artists of Classical Antiquity in his encyclopedic work The Natural History. He describes a few paintings of Iphigenia which were famous in his era.
The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, by the painter Timanthes of the 4th century BC, was well-known for depicting her father Agamemnon veiling himself in grief. A fresco from Pompeii is believed to be a loose adaptation of this painting. [4]
Iphigenia among the Taurians was painted by Timomachus, a painter of the 1st century BC whose work was renowned around the time of Julius Caesar. [5] A number of Pompeian frescoes are believed to be adaptations of this painting.
There are several vases that were made and decorated with illustrations of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The volute krater shown [6] was made in Apulia around 370–350 BC. It is in the red-figure technique. Here the sacrifice is about to take place, with the altar depicted in white. Agamemnon is painted here with a knife in his hand, showing that he about to commit the sacrifice. Artemis and Apollo are also illustrated. Artemis is looking down upon Iphigenia and Apollo is seated on a rock to the left, looking back. Death is imminent because the offering is going to be made with an audience around.
Recently, a mosaic [7] depicting Iphigenia was found in Perga, Turkey during an excavation by archaeologists. It is said to be about 1,800 years old. The mosaic shows Iphigenia during the Trojan War. It was concluded that the site was a cult area founded in the basement of a shop that could have existed during the days of Ancient Greece. In this depiction, Iphigenia is replaced by a deer, harrowingly missing death.
Iphigenia in Aulis is a play written by a Greek playwright Euripides. It revolves around Agamemnon's decision to sacrifice his daughter's life for Artemis. It is written through the eyes of Agamemnon. [8] [9] [10] Death is a main theme in this play because of the Iphigenia's circumstance, but also because the Trojan war is on the cusp.
Iphigenia in Tauris is another play written by Euripides. In this telling of the tale, Iphigenia is not dead, and she meets with her brother. She is made a priestess in the temple of Artemis of the Taurians She recounts her story and tells how she arrived to the place by the hands of Artemis. [11] Iphigenia conducts rites as a priestess to Artemis. Although, Iphigenia has eluded death in this play, it is still a theme and effects the tone because of it was the beginning of a domino effect for the play.
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Achaeans during the Trojan War. He was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Iphigenia, Iphianassa, Electra, Laodike, Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. Agamemnon was killed upon his return from Troy by Clytemnestra, or in an older version of the story, by Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. In later times, she was identified with Selene, the personification of the Moon. She was often said to roam the forests and mountains, attended by her entourage of nymphs. The goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.
In Greek mythology, Menelaus was a Greek king of Mycenaean (pre-Dorian) Sparta. According to the Iliad, the Trojan war began as a result of Menelaus's wife, Helen, fleeing to Troy with the Trojan prince Paris. Menelaus was a central figure in the Trojan War, leading the Spartan contingent of the Greek army, under his elder brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Prominent in both the Iliad and Odyssey, Menelaus was also popular in Greek vase painting and Greek tragedy, the latter more as a hero of the Trojan War than as a member of the doomed House of Atreus.
Helen, also known as Helen of Troy, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, and in Latin as Helena, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda or Nemesis, and the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also." Her abduction by Paris of Troy was the most immediate cause of the Trojan War.
In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the brother of Electra. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness, revenge, and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older works. In particular Orestes plays a main role in Aeschylus' Oresteia.
In Greek mythology, Iphigenia was a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus a princess of Mycenae.
In Greek mythology, Pylades was a Phocian prince as the son of King Strophius and Anaxibia who is the daughter of Atreus and sister of Agamemnon and Menelaus. He is mostly known for his relationship with his cousin Orestes, son of Agamemnon.
Iphigenia in Aulis or Iphigenia at Aulis 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.
Iphigenia in Tauris 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.
Timanthes of Cythnus was an ancient Greek painter of the fourth century BC. The most celebrated of his works was a picture representing the sacrifice of Iphigenia, in which he finely depicted the emotions of those who took part in the sacrifice; however, despairing of rendering the grief of Agamemnon, he represented him as veiling his face. Zeuxis Timanthes and Parrhasius were painters who belonged to the Ionian School of painting. The Ionian School flourished during the 4th-century BCE.
The Tauri, or Taurians, also Scythotauri, Tauri Scythae, Tauroscythae were an ancient people settled on the southern coast of the Crimea peninsula, inhabiting the Crimean Mountains in the 1st millennium BC and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the Black Sea. According to the sources, the Tauri were the first inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula and never abandoned its borders. They gave their name to the peninsula, which was known in ancient times as Taurica, Taurida and Tauris.
Iphigenia in Tauris is a reworking by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of the ancient Greek tragedy Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις by Euripides. Euripides' title means "Iphigenia among the Taurians", whereas Goethe's title means "Iphigenia in Taurica", the country of the Tauri.
Brauron was one of the twelve cities of ancient Attica, but never mentioned as a deme, though it continued to exist down to the latest times. It was situated on or near the eastern coast of Attica, between Steiria and Halae Araphenides, near the river Erasinus. Brauron is celebrated on account of the worship of Artemis Brauronia, in whose honor a festival was celebrated in this place. This site includes the remains of a temple, a stoa, and a theatre, providing insights into the religious practices and social life of ancient Greece. Its significance as a religious and cultural site can be further understood through the exploration of its archeological remains and historical accounts.
Iphigenia is a 1977 Greek film directed by Michael Cacoyannis, based on the Greek myth of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who was ordered by the goddess Artemis to be sacrificed. Cacoyannis adapted the film, the third in his "Greek Tragedy" trilogy, from his stage production of Euripides' play Iphigenia at Aulis. The film stars Tatiana Papamoschou as Iphigenia, Kostas Kazakos as Agamemnon and Irene Papas as Clytemnestra. The score was composed by Mikis Theodorakis.
Iphigénie en Aulide is an opera in three acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck, the first work he wrote for the Paris stage. The libretto was written by François-Louis Gand Le Bland Du Roullet and was based on Jean Racine's tragedy Iphigénie, itself based on the play Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides. It was premiered on 19 April 1774 by the Paris Opéra in the second Salle du Palais-Royal and revived in a slightly revised version the following year.
The House of the Tragic Poet is a Roman house in Pompeii, Italy dating to the 2nd century BCE. The house is famous for its elaborate mosaic floors and frescoes depicting scenes from Greek mythology.
Iphigénie is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by the French playwright Jean Racine. It was first performed in the Orangerie in Versailles on August 18, 1674, as part of the fifth of the royal Divertissements de Versailles of Louis XIV to celebrate the conquest of Franche-Comté. Later in December it was triumphantly revived at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, home of the royal troupe of actors in Paris.
Worshipers of Artemis were found all over the Ancient Greek world. This is evident from the presence of Artemis shrines and followers in various regions across ancient Greece. One of the most famous worshiping sites for Artemis was in Attica at Brauron. Artemis is said to have presided over all the biological transitions of females from before puberty to the first childbirth. "Young girls began to prepare for the event of the first childbirth at an early age. Even before menarche young girls danced for Artemis, in some places playing the role of animals. At the Attic site, or Brauron, in the rite called arkteia, girls representing the polis of Athens imitated she-bears, arktoi." "The initiation ritual for girls was called the Brauronia, after the location of Artemis' shrine at Brauron, in Attica, where the ritual, performed by girls before they reached puberty, took place." Brauron is the site where Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s daughter, is said to have established a temple to Artemis by decree of Athena, as told in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris.
Aulis was a Greek port town, located in ancient Boeotia in central Greece, at the Euripus Strait, opposite of the island of Euboea, at modern Mikro Vathy/Ag. Nikolaos. Livy states that Aulis was 3 miles (4.8 km) from Chalcis.
In Greek mythology, Thoas was a king of the Taurians, a barbaric tribe in Crimea. He was king when Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia was taken to the land of the Taurians, and became a priestess of Artemis there. He was a character in Euripides' play Iphigenia among the Taurians. He is sometimes identified with the Thoas who was the king of Lemnos and the son of Dionysus and Ariadne, and the father of Hypsipyle.