Wondering whether the first rites have been performed over the strangers, Thoas, the king of the Taurians, arrives before the temple and is amazed to see Iphigenia lifting the statue of Artemis up in her arms and moving it from its pedestal. This study guide contains the following sections: Thoas enters from the temple, asking what all the noise is about. Thoas, unwilling to disobey the wishes of a goddess, agrees to Athena’s demands. After speculating a bit on their plan of action, Orestes and Pylades decide to return to the seashore to wait for nightfall. [5], Wall painting at House of the Citharist, Pompeii (pre-79 AD. Iphigenia in Tauris (Ancient Greek: Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις, Iphigeneia en Taurois) 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. Iphigenia tells the herdsmen to bring the strangers to the temple, and says that she will prepare to sacrifice them. The play is set in front of the temple of Artemis among the Taurians (in what is today the Crimea on the northern coast of the Black Sea in Eastern Europe). Goethe’s Iphigenie, in blank verse, marks the beginning of Weimar Classicism, with its projection of objectivity of form and a new ethical message of Humanität in opposition…. Thoas agrees that this must be done, and suspects nothing. Thereafter, however, he found it increasingly difficult to complete anything, and…, …drama Iphigenie auf Tauris (1779–87; Iphigenie in Tauris), which reflects his reading of the great Greek dramas, specifically of Euripides’ Iphigeneia en Taurois. Iphigenia is allowed to take the statue from the temple and wash it in the sea—but that is, of course, not the only thing she does.

Thoas calls upon the citizens of his land to run along the shore and catch the ship. The attendants to Iphigenia leave to prepare for the sacrifice. Orestes, Pylades, and Iphigenia plan an escape whereby Iphigenia will claim that the strangers need to be cleansed in order to be sacrificed and will take them to the bay where their ship is anchored. “It is most shameful for anyone to save himself by hurling his friends' affairs into catastrophe,” Orestes says. One of Thoas’ servants arrives before the temple to relay some urgent news to the king: “the girl who presided at this altar,” he says hurriedly, “has left the country with the strangers, and has taken with her the holy statue of the goddess.” The purification was an elaborate ruse: the strangers are, in fact, Iphigenia’s brother Orestes, and his dear friend Pylades. Orestes explains that he has avenged Agamemnon's death by killing Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. Then she brought me to stay in this land.[4]. Synopsis. She was told that she was being married to Achilles, but upon arriving in Aulis, she discovered that she was going to be sacrificed by Agamemnon. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iphigenie-in-Tauris, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: First Weimar period (1776–86), German literature: Weimar Classicism: Goethe and Schiller. Fortunately, soon after leaving the harbor, their ship’s progress was halted by stormy winds and driven almost all the way back to the shore. (See plot of Iphigeneia at Aulis.) Looking for the plot summary of Iphigenia in Tauris ?

“He lives, the miserable one, both nowhere and everywhere,” answers Orestes. The play begins with Iphigenia reflecting on her brother's death. Meanwhile, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon with assistance from his friend Pylades. The Taurians tried stopping the three, but, though outnumbered, the foreigners eventually prevailed. Orestes was sent by Apollo to retrieve the image of Artemis from the temple, and Pylades has accompanied him. Orestes explains that he has come to this land by the bidding of Phoebus's oracle, and that if he is successful, he might finally be free of the haunting Erinyes. The young princess Iphigenia is being sacrificed to the gods at the hands of her own father, Agamemnon, but before he is able to consummate the act, the goddess Artemis intervenes and replaces the girl with a deer, spiriting her away to the Temple of Artemis in Tauris, where Iphigenia becomes a … Fetch me back to Argos, my brother, before I die. A herdsman enters and explains to Iphigenia that he has captured two Hellenes and that Iphigenia should make ready the lustral water and the rites of consecration. At the last moment the goddess Artemis, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, intervened and replaced Iphigeneia on the altar with a deer, saving the girl and sweeping her off to the land of the Taurians.

They finally settle on this plan: Iphigenia will ask for permission to remove the statue of Artemis from the temple for purification, on the premise that it has been polluted by Orestes’ hands, still stained with his mother’s blood. Relieved to hear that her dreams were false and desperate to contact her brother, Iphigenia comes up with an interesting idea: she offers to spare the life of Orestes if he agrees to take back to Argos a letter supposedly written for her by an earlier victim.

Orestes demands that he be sacrificed, and that Pylades be sent home with the letter, because Orestes brought Pylades on this trip, and it would not be right for Pylades to die while Orestes lives.

“No barbarian would have ever dared this!” Suspecting nothing, Thoas allows the admirably pious Iphigenia to take the strangers and the statue to the seashore and cleanse them all—the former from the pollution, the latter from their sins. It is now the job of Iphigenia to prepare for sacrifice any Greek male who might arrive in the land of the Taurians. Apollo sends him to steal a sacred statue of Artemis to bring back to Athens so that he may be set free. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Namely, they have been sent on a mission by Apollo to retrieve a statue of his sister Artemis, which is said to have fallen to the temple from heaven; by giving it back to the Athenian land, Orestes can earn some rest from his labors and finally end his torment by the Erinyes (though appeased by Athena, not all of them have abandoned his visions and hallucinations in the meantime). Orestes and Pylades exit. Ironically, it is at that very moment that Orestes, followed by his faithful friend Pylades, appears on the stage. Thoas heeds Athena's words, because whoever hears the words of the gods and heeds them not is out of his mind. Pylades interrupts the emotional scene with a wake-up call: “We must leave off wailing and turn to other matters: how we shall get the glorious name of safety and leave the foreign land.” Together the three start devising strategies for their escape, not forgetting the original mission of Orestes as well: the theft of the statue of Artemis.

Iphigenia in Taurus Summary.