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IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS.

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IPHIGENIA.

Pelops,[1] the son of Tantalus, setting out to Pisa with his swift steeds, weds the daughter of Oenomaus, from whom sprang Atreus; and from Atreus his sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon, from which [latter] I was born, Iphigenia, child of [Clytaemnestra,] daughter of Tyndarus, whom my father, as he imagined, sacrificed to Diana on account of Helen, near the eddies, which Euripus continually whirls to and fro, upturning the dark blue sea with frequent blasts, in the famed[2] recesses of Aulis.  For here indeed king Agamemnon drew together a Grecian armament of a thousand ships, desiring that the Greeks might take the glorious prize of victory over Troy,[3] and avenge the outraged nuptials of Helen, for the gratification of Menelaus.  But, there being great difficulty of sailing,[4] and meeting with no winds, he came to [the consideration of] the omens of burnt sacrifices, and Calchas speaks thus.  O thou who rulest over this Grecian expedition, Agamemnon, thou wilt not lead forth thy ships from the ports of this land, before Diana shall receive thy daughter Iphigenia as a victim; for thou didst vow to sacrifice to the light-bearing Goddess whatsoever the year should bring forth most beautiful.  Now your wife Clytaemnestra has brought forth a daughter in your house, referring to me the title of the most beautiful, whom thou must needs sacrifice.  And so, by the arts of Ulysses,[5] they drew me from my mother under pretense of being wedded to Achilles.  But I wretched coming to Aulis, being seized and raised aloft above[6] the pyre, would have been slain by the sword; but Diana, giving to the Greeks a stag in my stead, stole me away, and, sending me through the clear ether,[7] she settled me in this land of the Tauri, where barbarian Thoas rules[8] the land, o’er barbarians, [Thoas,] who guiding his foot swift as the pinion, has arrived at this epithet [of Thoas, i.e. the swift] on account of his fleetness of foot.  And she places me in this house as priestess, since which time the Goddess Diana is wont to be pleased with such rites as these,[9] the name of which alone is fair.  But, for the rest, I am silent, fearing the Goddess.  For I sacrifice even as before was the custom in the city, whatever Grecian man comes to this land.  I crop the hair, indeed, but the slaying that may not be told is the care of others within these shrines.[10] But the new visions which the [past] night hath brought with it, I will tell to the sky,[11] if indeed this be any remedy.  I seemed in my sleep, removed from this land, to be dwelling in Argos, and to slumber in my virgin chamber, but the surface of the earth [appeared] to be shaken with a movement, and I fled, and standing without beheld the coping[12] of the house giving way, and all the roof falling stricken to the ground from the high supports.  And one pillar alone, as it seemed to me, was left of my ancestral