Uma is a sixth-form student studying Classical Civilisation, Latin and English A-levels, and aspires to get degrees in classics, and then law. Captivated by classical subjects from a young age, Uma loves to read books by authors such as Natalie Haynes, Mary Beard, and Madeline Miller. Inspired by the opera Elektra, Uma decided to explore Iphigenia’s story, give her a voice, and decide what they believe the story of her life, or rather death, may have been.
There are a small number of things we know for sure about Iphigenia: she was the mythical daughter of the Mycenaean king and queen, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and she was deceived into being the sacrifice for the Greeks’ successful voyage to Troy, which can be attributed to the militarism prioritised over family by the Greek warriors. However, the outcome of this sacrifice is ambiguous.
First, the myth: Iphigenia was brought to Aulis by Agamemnon under the guise that she was to marry Achilles, but when she arrived, Agamemnon sacrificed her to Artemis instead. In some versions, he tried to stop the sacrifice, but then gave in after his honour as a Greek commander was questioned. Some sources tell that Iphigenia is rescued from a miserable fate by Artemis, who replaced her with a deer at the last second and took her to be a priestess in Tauris, but in any case, Agamemnon had the intention of sacrificing her. So, what really happened?
At first glance, it may seem simple: Iphigenia did die at Aulis as a result of the sacrifice. Various sources, including paintings, show the beginning of the sacrifice and the moment before her death. In the majority of these paintings, there are a few common factors: there is an executioner holding a knife in the air, preparing to strike; there is Iphigenia in a vulnerable, disadvantaged position; as well as a group of people surrounding them, varying in size and unable to make eye contact with her or watch the sacrifice, shielding their eyes. An example of this is a late 17th Century painting from a Venetian art school depicts a pale-faced Iphigenia with a man with above her, holding a raised dagger, and Artemis also present in the clouds above her. Here, Iphigenia’s death seems inevitable and she is powerless. This painting is a representation of the earliest, widely known myth regarding Iphigenia’s sacrifice, where she did die.
The limitation, however, is that Iphienia seems to be an adult in this painting instead of a child, which does not correspond with the Iliad’s account; if she was not a child at the time, Artemis, who represented young girls, would not have chosen her as the sacrifice. This basic, popular myth can also be seen in the second book of the Aeneid, where Virgil states, through the voice of Sinon retelling the words of the prophet of Phoebus Apollo, that the Greeks ‘appeased the wind’ (‘placastis ventos’) ‘with blood and a slaughtered maiden’ (‘sanguine…et virgine caesa’): here, he references Iphigenia, and claims that the sacrifice was successful.
An intriguing modern play adaptation by Marina Carr from 2022, called Girl on an Altar, also ordains that she died as a result of the sacrifice. Here, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter to ensure good winds for his journey to Troy, and when Clytemnestra reunites with him ten years later, she kills him to avenge her daughter. The death of Iphigenia is not conventionally portrayed in modern adaptations, as many productions take the story metaphorically, but the myth that she died has endured until now.
There are, however, limitations to the sources stating that she did not survive: for example, the paintings only depict the moment before her death, and never her actual death, therefore the outcome is ambiguous. A large amount of those paintings also disprove her tragic demise, depicting Artemis holding a deer, hovering above the sacrifice, presumably about to replace Iphigenia with it. The majority of the ancient evidence, therefore, points to a belief in Iphigenia’s survival. This evidence takes a myriad of forms, ranging from plays to vases to paintings. For example, a vase in red figure was found depicting Iphigenia as the object of the sacrifice, halfway between her human and deer states.
This is evidence for her not being killed, but rather depicts her being saved by Artemis, and is one of multiple vases depicting a similar scene. The Greek playwright, Euripides, also claims that Iphigenia survived in his play, Iphigenia at Aulis, where she does get sacrificed at the end after a large amount of deliberation on Agamemnon’s part, but the news arrives via messenger to Clytemnestra, who could not watch, that she survived and ‘a deer lay there gasping’ instead. In one of Euripides’ later plays, Iphigenia at Tauris, Iphigenia acts as a priestess of Artemis, performing human sacrifices for her before meeting her brother, Orestes: in Euripides’ eyes, Iphigenia has survived.
Another literary source, Roman this time, and inspired by Euripides’ play, which tells of her survival is Hyginus’ Fabulae: the story of Iphigenia Taurica mentions her at the temple of Diana, which indicates that she has been taken there by Diana. This version has survived across Roman culture as well as Greek culture.
More recently, operas by artists such as Goethe and Schubert have portrayed Iphigenia being spared by Artemis. In Schubert’s op. 98 no. 3, she is lamenting her homesickness, ‘blossoming here on the shores of Tauris’: she seems to have survived and is serving as a priestess of Artemis. Goethe, in his opera ‘Iphigenia’, also very much laments her misery, calling her displacement a ‘second death’, but also asserts that Artemis gave the ‘holy shelter’ of her ‘arm’. In both, she acts as Iphigenia’s saviour as well as the reason behind her suffering, having demanded her sacrifice.
The majority of the evidence points to a preference for Iphigenia’s survival, but we must consider the reason why this is: this could be because those who found the evidence in the past preserved only the myths they believed to be true, or it could be because more people in ancient Greece and Rome believed that Iphigenia did not die, or even both. We cannot know for sure, but due to the far larger number of sources we have which point to her survival, even from modern artists her myth has inspired, the belief in Iphigenia’s survival seems to have won.