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EuripidesIphigenia in Aulis
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 410A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Lines 1-606Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Lines 1-302 Summary: “Prologue and Parodos”
The play is set in the Greek military camp at Aulis in front of the tent of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and commander of the expedition. It is the middle of the night. Agamemnon summons the Old Man, a faithful enslaved man who was part of the dowry Agamemnon received when he married his wife Clytemnestra. In the dialogue between the two men, the Old Man points out that it is late and asks Agamemnon why he is not sleeping like everybody else. Agamemnon says that he envies those who are not burdened by power and honor, prompting the Old Man to remind him of the “glory” (20) that such burdens bring. In a short speech, the Old Man tells Agamemnon that such complaints are improper for a king and that all mortals must experience unhappiness and suffering sometimes. He then asks Agamemnon about the letter that he sees him writing and rewriting.
Agamemnon provides the play’s exposition. He describes the daughters of Leda and Tyndareus. One of these daughters, Clytemnestra, is his wife. Another is Helen, who had many powerful suitors because of her famed beauty. Tyndareus feared that if he chose one of the suitors as Helen’s husband the rest would turn against him, so he made all the suitors swear an oath:
That whoever won Helen, the others would defend him.
And if any man should steal her from his house,
Then all must go to war against that man
And sack his town, be it barbarian or Greek. (61-65)
This done, Helen married Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother. However, she soon fell in love with a handsome prince from Troy named Paris when he came to visit Menelaus, and the two ran off together. Menelaus promptly called on Helen’s old suitors to make good on the oath they made and help him retrieve his wife. As Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon was appointed commander of the expedition. However as soon as the vast army was assembled at the port town of Aulis, a lack of wind prevented them from setting sail. Calchas, the army’s seer, revealed that the goddess Artemis would only provide wind for the fleet if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to her. Though initially unwilling to carry out this deed, Agamemnon was eventually convinced by Menelaus to write a letter to Clytemnestra asking her to send Iphigenia on the pretext that he wished to marry her to Achilles, the greatest of the Greek heroes.
Now Agamemnon has come to regret his decision and has written a second letter telling Clytemnestra to disregard his previous command and to keep Iphigenia at home. He entrusts this letter to the Old Man. The Old Man initially expresses concern about Agamemnon’s plan, but Agamemnon urges him to set out to deliver the letter, making certain to have Iphigenia and her entourage turn around should he encounter them already on the way.
Agamemnon exits into his tent and the Old Man exits in the direction of the road. The Chorus enters to sing the parodos, the first song in a Greek tragedy. The Chorus is comprised of young married women from the city of Chalcis in Euboea (located just across the strait from Aulis). They tell of how they have come to Aulis to see the illustrious heroes who have mustered under Agamemnon and Menelaus to sail against Troy. They give vivid portraits or vignettes of many of the individual heroes, including the two Ajaxes, Diomedes, and Achilles, whose remarkable prowess and superhuman athleticism are described in detail. The Chorus also catalogues the numbers of the ships of the most important Greek leaders.
Lines 303-606 Summary: “First Episode and First Stasimon”
Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus bursts onto the stage, trailed by the Old Man. The two exchange a few lines of iambic verse (a stylistic feature known as stichomythia) in which it is revealed that Menelaus intercepted the Old Man as he was leaving the camp and has confiscated the letter he was carrying. The Old Man tries to recover the letter, but Menelaus refuses to let it go.
Agamemnon exits from his tent to see what the commotion is about, and Menelaus confronts him with the contents of the letter. Agamemnon rages at Menelaus for spying on him, and Menelaus retorts that Agamemnon’s “shifty” (33) behavior justifies him. A formal debate scene (an agon) ensues. Menelaus delivers a long monologue in which he first describes Agamemnon’s ambition and the lengths he went to win leadership of the Greek army, saying that once he became commander, he forgot his friends and became unapproachable. He then accuses Agamemnon of neglecting his duty to Greece by changing his mind about sacrificing Iphigenia, even though he had originally agreed to do so “willingly” (362). In his rebuttal monologue, Agamemnon calls Menelaus “crazed” (388) for his determination to win back a wife (Helen) who betrayed him—suggesting that the rest of the Greeks are no less foolish for following him—and that it would be disgraceful and shameless for him to sacrifice his own daughter for such a cause.
As the brothers continue to bicker, a Messenger enters to announce that Iphigenia and Clytemnestra have arrived; Clytemnestra has brought along her and Agamemnon’s infant son Orestes. The army has learned of their arrival and has flocked to see them, and the Messenger suggests that it is time to prepare for the wedding (believing this to be the reason for Iphigenia’s arrival). Agamemnon thanks the Messenger and dismisses him, then he laments his fate and resigns himself to the sacrifice.
Menelaus, in a change of heart, pities his brother and concedes that he was “witless and an adolescent” (488-89) when he demanded that Agamemnon sacrifice his innocent daughter so that he could retrieve his treacherous wife. He tells Agamemnon that he should disband the army rather than go through with the sacrifice. Agamemnon, however, has come to believe that there is no way now to avoid the sacrifice. Though the prophecy is not yet widely known, he points out that the two others who do know of it—Calchas and Odysseus—will tell the army soon, at which point it will be impossible for Agamemnon to reverse course. Agamemnon concludes that the sacrifice must happen, and asks only that Menelaus (and the Chorus) say nothing to Clytemnestra until the arrangements have been made.
Agamemnon and Menelaus exit. The Chorus remains on stage to sing the first stasimon. They praise those who are able to experience love in moderation, rebuking Paris and Helen for failing to follow this precept. As Clytemnestra enters with Iphigenia and the infant Orestes, the Chorus greet them and praise their lofty pedigree.
Lines 1-606 Analysis
Most Attic tragedies starting from the middle of the fifth century BCE had a Chorus and three actors who shared the speaking parts among themselves. The actor who played the most important role was conventionally known as the “Protagonist” (Greek protagonistes); the second actor was the “Deuteragonist” (deutoragonistes); and the third actor was the “Tritagonist” (tritagonistes). In Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, the Protagonist played Agamemnon and Achilles; the Deuteragonist, Menelaus and Clytemnestra; the Tritagonist, the Old Man, Iphigenia, and the Messenger. The infant Orestes may have been represented by an extra who was an actual infant or by a doll.
The extant text of the play begins with a dialogue in anapestic meter between Agamemnon and the Old Man, his trusted servant. This is almost unique among Euripides’ extant plays, which all begin with a monologue in iambic meter (the only exception is Rhesus, whose traditional attribution to Euripides is considered mistaken by most modern scholars). The iambic monologue that would typically open the play is embedded into the anapestic dialogue, and because of this many scholars have regarded the dialogue that opens the play as a later addition not written by Euripides. Similar conclusions have been drawn about other sections of the play (particularly the ending), but they are always a matter of speculation and some controversy. For the sake of simplicity and transparency, this analysis will be based on the entire text of the play as we have it.
The first scenes of the play introduce the setting as well as several key themes, most notably the theme of duty. All mortals have certain duties that they must perform. Duty is the only way for people to win honor and glory—even if it means they must sometimes do things they do not like. After all, as the Old Man reminds Agamemnon, no mortal can always be happy:
It is necessary that you be glad
And sad too, for you were born
Mortal, and whether you like it or not,
That’s what the gods wish. (Lines 31-34)
Moreover, those who enjoy a position of power like Agamemnon must often perform duties that are especially burdensome—but the glory they win is also much greater. In the beginning of the play, Agamemnon is trying to avoid his duty to the Greek army, which involves the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. The debate scene (the agon) shows Agamemnon and Menelaus each advocating for a different kind of duty. Agamemnon argues that that it would be “against law” (397) to violate his familial duty by killing his own daughter. For Menelaus, Agamemnon’s refusal to sacrifice Iphigenia is a betrayal of all of Greece, or “Hellas,” who must let “those worthless barbarians slip away / and mock her name” (371-72) if Agamemnon neglects his duty. This introduces the idea that one’s duty to all Greece—their “Panhellenic” duty—comes before all other duties, including duty to family. This idea will become increasingly important as the play progresses.
The first part of the play also establishes its relationship to and exploration of earlier mythical and literary traditions. This meta-literary element is particularly prominent in the Chorus’ parodos. The Chorus has come to Aulis:
To see this host
Of noble Achaeans, with their oar-borne ships
Of heroes, whom Menelaus, the yellow-haired,
And Agamemnon, nobly born—our husbands tell us—
Sent in a thousand galleys
To seek out Helen and seize her (Lines 171-78)
By the time Euripides composed his Iphigenia in Aulis, the story of the “host / Of noble Achaeans” (171-2) who sailed against Troy was known already from many literary sources, perhaps most notably the epics of Homer. Euripides, indeed, engages very directly with his Homeric predecessor throughout his play, especially in the parodos, where the Chorus describes many of the heroes who populated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. One especially important allusion comes when the Chorus catalogues the most important leaders of the expedition and the number of ships sailing under each of them, a clear reworking of the famous “Catalogue of Ships” found in Book 2 of the Iliad.
Euripides’ play will go on to build on its relationship to the Iliad on a broader structural level. In particular, Iphigenia in Aulis will feature a conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles, thus presaging the quarrel between these same heroic figures that motivates the action of the Iliad (whose story is set several years after Iphigenia in Aulis).
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