Iphigenia in Aulis orIphigenia at Aulis^[1] (Ancient Greek:Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι,romanized: Īphigéneia en Aulídi; variously translated, including the LatinIphigenia in Aulide) is the last of the extant works by the playwrightEuripides. Written between 408, afterOrestes, and 406 BC, the year of Euripides' death, the play was first produced the following year^[2] in a trilogy withThe Bacchae andAlcmaeon in Corinth by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger,^[3] and won first place at theCity Dionysia in Athens.^[2]

Iphigenia in Aulis
The Anger of Achilles byJacques-Louis David
Written by	Euripides
Chorus	Greek Women ofChalcis.
Characters	Agamemnon Old servant Menelaus First Messenger Clytemnestra Iphigenia Achilles Second Messenger
Date premiered	405 BC
Place premiered	Athens
Original language	Ancient Greek
Genre	Tragedy
Setting	Port ofAulis

Set prior to the commencement of the Trojan War,Iphigenia at Aulis revolves around the strong resistance by Clytemnestra to the decision of her husband,Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek coalition before and during theTrojan War, to ritually sacrifice and kill his daughter,Iphigenia, to appease the goddessArtemis. This would allow his troops to set sail to preserve their honour in order to battle and ultimately sackTroy, actions which would result in the killing of all of Troy's men and the enslavement of all of its women by Agamemnon and the Greek men.^[4] These latter events are central to several of the Greek tragedies such as Euripides'Hecuba andThe Trojan Women, as well asAeschylus' playAgamemnon.

The conflict inIphigenia 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 inIphigenia at Aulis.^[4]

The Greek fleet is waiting atAulis, Boeotia, with its ships ready to sail for Troy, but is unable to depart due to a strange lack of wind. After consulting theseerCalchas, the Greek leaders learn that this is no mere meteorological abnormality but rather the will of the goddessArtemis, who is withholding the winds because Agamemnon has offended her because his men have killed a sacred stag.

Calchas informs the general that in order to appease the goddess, he must sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. Agamemnon, in spite of his horror, must consider this seriously because his assembled troops, who have been waiting on the beach and are increasingly restless, may rebel if the delay continues. He sends a message to his wife,Clytemnestra, telling her to send Iphigenia to Aulis on the pretext that the girl is to be married to the Greek warriorAchilles before he sets off to fight.

At the start of the play, Agamemnon has second thoughts about going through with the sacrifice and sends a second message to his wife, telling her to ignore the first. Clytemnestra never receives it, however, because it is intercepted byMenelaus, Agamemnon's brother, who is enraged over his change of heart.

To Menelaus, this is not only a personal blow (for it is his wife,Helen, with whom the Trojan princeParis ran off, and whose retrieval is the main pretext for the war), it may also lead to mutiny and the downfall of the Greek leaders should the rank and file discover the prophecy and realise that their general has put his family above their pride as soldiers.

The brothers debate the matter and, eventually, each seemingly changes the other's mind. Menelaus is apparently convinced that it would be better to disband the Greek army than to have his niece killed, but Agamemnon is now ready to carry out the sacrifice, claiming that the army will storm his palace at Argos and kill his entire family if he does not. By this time, Clytemnestra is already on her way to Aulis with Iphigenia and her baby brotherOrestes, making the decision of how to proceed all the more difficult.

Iphigenia is thrilled at the prospect of marrying one of the great heroes of the Greek army, but she, her mother, and the ostensible groom-to-be soon discover the truth. Furious at having been used as a prop in Agamemnon's plan, Achilles vows to defend Iphigenia, initially more for the purposes of his own honour than to save the innocent girl. However, when he tries to rally the Greeks against the sacrifice, he finds out that "the entirety of Greece"—including theMyrmidons under his personal command—demand that Agamemnon's wishes be carried out, and he barely escapes being stoned.

Clytemnestra and Iphigenia try in vain to persuade Agamemnon to change his mind, but the general believes that he has no choice. As Achilles prepares to defend Iphigenia by force, Iphigenia, realizing that she has no hope of escape, begs Achilles not to throw his life away in a lost cause. Over her mother's protests and to Achilles's admiration, she consents to her sacrifice, declaring that she would rather die heroically, winning renown as the savior of Greece, than be dragged unwilling to the altar. Leading the chorus in a hymn to Artemis, she goes to her death, with her mother Clytemnestra so distraught as to presage her murder of her husband and Orestes's matricide years later.

The play as it exists in the manuscripts ends with a messenger reporting that Iphigenia has been replaced on the altar by a deer. It is, however, generally considered that this is not an authentic part of Euripides' original text.^[5] "Paley agrees withPorson 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".^[6] 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.

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,..."^[7]

About the Arethusa myth:

"TheSicilian well Arethusa, ...was believed to have a subterraneous communication with the riverAlpheius, inPeloponnesus. According toPausanias, Alpheius was a passionate hunter and fell in love with the nymphArethusa, but she fled from him to the island ofOrtygia nearSyracuse, 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 byOvid. Arethusa, a fair nymph, once while bathing in the river Alpheius inArcadia, was surprised and pursued by the god; butArtemis took pity upon her and changed her into a well, which flowed under the earth to the island of Ortygia."^[8]

The play inspired the tragedyIphigénie (1674) byJean 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 byChristian Heinrich Postel,Die wunderbar errettete Iphigenia, set byReinhard Keiser in 1699. The most popular libretto wasApostolo Zeno'sIfigenia in Aulide (1718), set byAntonio Caldara (1718),Giuseppe Maria Orlandini (1732),Giovanni Porta (1738),Nicola Porpora (1735),Girolamo Abos (1752),Giuseppe Sarti (1777),Angelo Tarchi (1785), andGiuseppe Giordani (1786). Other libretti includeIfigenia byMatteo Verazi (set byNiccolò Jommelli, 1751), that ofVittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi (set byFerdinando Bertoni, 1762 andCarlo Franchi, 1766), that ofLuigi Serio (set byVicente Martín y Soler, 1779 andAlessio Prati, 1784), and that ofFerdinando Moretti (set byNiccolò Antonio Zingarelli, 1787 andLuigi Cherubini, 1788). However, the best-known opera today isChristoph Willibald Gluck'sIphigénie en Aulide (1774).^[9]

Iphigenia in Aulis has had a significant influence on modern art. Greek directorMichael Cacoyannis based his 1977 filmIphigenia (starringIrene Papas as Clytemnestra) on Euripides's script. The play also formed the basis for the 2003 novelThe Songs of the Kings byBarry Unsworth, as well as theP. D. Q. Bach cantataIphigenia in Brooklyn.Neil LaBute drew heavily on the story of Iphigenia for his short playIphigenia in Orem, one of his Bash series.

US Latina playwrightCaridad Svich's 2004 multimedia playIphigenia 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 anthologyDivine 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 themurders 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'sIphigenia 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 theNew York Times review as a "proudly unfaithful and rather tedious version of Euripides' "Iphigenia at Aulis." "^[10]

Greek directorYorgos Lanthimos based his 2017 filmThe 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 byEdward Einhorn and with art byEric Shanower.^[11]

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).^[12] 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).^[13] 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.

• Jane Lumley (1537–1578), ca. 1555 (first published in 1909)
• Robert Potter, 1781 – verse,full text
• T. A. Buckley, 1850 – prose^[14]
• Edward Philip Coleridge [Wikidata], 1891 – prose^[15]
• Arthur Way, 1912 – verse
• Florence M. Stawell, 1929 – verse
• Moses Hadas and John McLean, 1936 - prose^[16]
• Charles R. Walker, 1958^[17]
• 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
• George Theodoridis, 2007^[18]
• Edward Einhorn, 2013^[19]
• Anne Lill, 2013 - Estonian, received Alexander Kurtna Award^[20]
• Nicolas Billon & Roger Beck, 2010
• Christopher Collard &James Morwood, 2017 – verse
• Andy Hinds, with Martine Cuypers 2017^[21]
• Brian Vinero, 2018 – rhymed verse^[22]
• Rachel Hadas, 2018 - verse^[23]

•   The full text ofIphigenia in Aulis at Wikisource (multiple English translations)
• Text at The Internet Classics Archive
• Text at The Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University
•  Iphigenia in Aulis public domain audiobook atLibriVox