Iphigenia in Aulis and Other Plays

Summary

This volume completes the library's surviving plays of Euripides with eleven works in Edward P. Coleridge's prose translation of 1891. Iphigenia in Aulis, produced after the poet's death in 405 BC, opens at night on the shore of Aulis, where the Greek fleet is held back by windless weather. The seer Calchas has declared that Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis, and Agamemnon has summoned her by pretending she is to marry Achilles. He tries to cancel the summons, but Menelaus intercepts the letter, the brothers quarrel, and Clytemnestra arrives with the girl. Achilles, learning of the trick, offers to defend her against the whole army; Iphigenia begs her father for her life, then chooses to die willingly for Hellas. A messenger reports that at the altar a deer was found in her place, an ending many scholars think was added after Euripides. The Heracleidae shows the children of Heracles and old Iolaus taking refuge at Marathon, where King Demophon of Athens protects them from Eurystheus; Heracles's daughter Macaria gives her life to meet an oracle, Iolaus is made young again in battle, and the captured Eurystheus foretells that his tomb will guard Athens. In Andromache, Hector's widow, now the slave of Neoptolemus, is threatened with her son by Hermione and Menelaus until old Peleus rescues them. The Suppliants shows the mothers of the Seven against Thebes pleading at Eleusis; Theseus defends Athenian law against a Theban herald, recovers the bodies by force, and Evadne throws herself onto her husband's pyre. In Heracles, the hero returns from Hades to save his family from the usurper Lycus, then is driven mad by Hera's agents Iris and Madness and kills his wife and sons; Theseus persuades him to live and come to Athens. Ion tells of a Delphic temple servant who proves to be the son Creusa bore to Apollo and abandoned, after she nearly poisons him. Helen follows the version in which Helen never went to Troy; the Greeks fought for a phantom, and Menelaus, shipwrecked in Egypt, finds his true wife and escapes with her by a ruse. The Phoenician Maidens retells the war of Eteocles and Polynices with Jocasta still alive, trying to reconcile her sons; Menoeceus sacrifices himself for Thebes, the brothers kill each other, and Antigone leads the blind Oedipus into exile. Orestes shows the matricide six days after the deed, raving and nursed by Electra, condemned by Argos, and finally rescued by Apollo. Rhesus, whose authorship is disputed, dramatizes the night raid of Iliad X, and The Cyclops, the only complete satyr play to survive, comically retells Odysseus's blinding of Polyphemus.

Top Lessons

• A sacrifice freely offered

  Iphigenia first begs her father for life, then accepts death so that Hellas may sail, calling it her monument; Macaria and Menoeceus also give themselves for their people. Euripides presents willing self-offering as noble while leaving the audience to weigh the men and gods who demand it.

• Friendship in ruin

  After killing his family in madness, Heracles wants to die; Theseus uncovers his face, takes his blood-stained hand, and argues him into living. Pylades stands by Orestes in the same way. The plays show friendship as what holds a person to life after disaster.

• Law, burial and the city

  In The Suppliants Theseus argues that written laws give rich and poor equal justice, and he goes to war to secure burial for the dead. The play gives a classic Athenian defense of law and of the duty owed to the dead.

• Appearance and truth

  Helen reveals that the Greeks fought ten years for a phantom; Ion turns on mistaken identities; Agamemnon's false wedding hides a sacrifice. Euripides repeatedly sets what is believed against what is true.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Two plays in this volume are central texts for the history of madness. In Heracles, madness is a character: Iris brings Madness (Lyssa) onstage to enter the hero, and the messenger describes the attack in bodily terms, rolling and bloodshot eyes, foam, wild laughter, and delusions that he is marching on Mycenae; when he wakes he has no memory of the killings. Modern commentators have compared the description with epileptic or psychotic episodes, a reading the play itself frames as divine assault. Orestes opens six days after the matricide with the hero sleepless and fasting, swept by fits in which he sees the Furies, and nursed by Electra, who wipes the foam from his lips; on waking he praises sleep and has lost recollection of the attack. Asked by Menelaus what his sickness is, he names his conscience, the knowledge of his own crime, one of the earliest literary statements of guilt as an illness of mind. Elsewhere Ion's Creusa attempts poisoning with a drop of Gorgon's blood, and a dove that drinks the poisoned wine dies in convulsions; Evadne and Jocasta die by suicide in grief; and The Cyclops shows drunkenness as Odysseus's weapon. These are dramatic and religious portrayals; clinical labels are interpretations.

• Heracles, Iris and Madness scene and messenger speech

  Madness is sent into Heracles; the messenger describes his eyes, foaming and delusions as he kills his sons and wife.

• Heracles, final scene

  Heracles wakes bound to a pillar, learns what he has done, contemplates suicide, and is persuaded by Theseus to live.

• Orestes, opening scenes

  Electra describes her brother's six days without food or bathing, tends him in sleep, and watches a fit in which he sees the Furies.

• Orestes, Menelaus scene

  Orestes names his conscience as his sickness and describes his grief and the visions of the avenging goddesses.

• Ion, servant's report

  Creusa's poisoned cup is spilled; a dove drinks from it, convulses and dies, exposing the plot.

• The Suppliants, Evadne scene

  Evadne throws herself onto the pyre of Capaneus before her father Iphis.

• The Cyclops

  Odysseus makes Polyphemus drunk on Maron's wine before blinding him.