#iphigeneia in tauris

[dykeganseythethird]

@mothercain as iphigeneia

[siena-sevenwits]

So a herdsman just ran onstage saying basically, "My young mistress! Surprising news! Two nice young men just arrived onshore! They would certainly make a pleasant offering, a sacrifice to our goddess, Artemis! Come, Iphigeneia, quickly, prepare the rites for the blessing and their purification!"

... I feel like Iphigeneia was expecting that speech to go on differently when he told her there were two nice young men just arrived. As though the opening scene in Pride and Prejudice went like this:

MRS BENNET: My dear! Mr Bennet ! Wonderful news! Netherfield Park is let at last! By a single man of large fortune, my dear! He came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place. His name is Bingley, and he will be in possession by Michaelmas, and he has 5,000 a year! What a fine thing for our girls.

MR BENNET: How so? How can it affect them?

MRS BENNET: Oh, Mr Bennet , how can you be so tiresome? You must know that I’m thinking they might bring him to the altar as a sacrifice. To Artemis, naturally.

MR BENNET: So that is his design in settling here, to ritually spill his blood in a pleasant manner?

MRS BENNET: Design? Oh how can you talk such nonsense?

[nimiana]

Orin the Red and Helena Anchev in the House of Atreus

Aeschylus' Agamemnon tr. Anne Carson / @qrowscant-art / Gustave Courbet, The Preparation of the Dead Girl / Euripides' Iphigeneia in Tauris tr. Kenneth McLeish / Erin Endicott , The Healing Sutras / Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis tr. Mary-Kay Gamel / John Clymer The Offering / Agata Kuś Postrzyżyny / florenceros.e on Instagram / Miklós Ligeti Ophelia / Tory Adkisson Anecdote of the Pig / @softinvasions

[manderleyfire]

You’re murdering me!

IPHIGENEIA IN TAURIS // Euripides (tr. Kenneth McLeish)

happy birthday @matressofwire ♥

[bluebeardsfinalgirl]

iphigeneia in tauris, euripides, tr. kenneth mcleish

[transgenderer]

i didnt realize how widespread greek colonization was! all the blue stuff is greek! there's one way in the north east on the don river and way in the northwest in catalonia

According to Greek mythology, Crimea is the place to which Iphigeneia was sent after the goddess Artemis rescued her from the human sacrifice her father was about to perform. Artemis swept the young princess off to the peninsula, where she became a priestess at her temple. Here, she was forced by the Taurian king Thoas to perform human sacrifices on any foreigners who came ashore. According to other historians, the Tauri were known for their savage rituals and piracy and were also the earliest indigenous peoples of the peninsula. The land of Tauris and its rumored customs of killing Greeks are also described by Herodotus in his histories, Book IV, 99–100 and 103.

and one of the largest greek poleis was in crimea! 3000 square kilometers!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Τους πόνους γαρ αγαθοί τολμώσι, δειλοί δ’ εισίν ουδέν ουδαμού.**

- Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris

**The brave will dare the effort (of war), cowards are nothing nowhere.

I fear the wit and irony of this British Army recruitment post will be lost to the more sensitive and easily triggered SJW keyboard warriors.

[catilinas]

hi! sorry you probably get this kinda ask a hundred times a month but i wanted to check! i wanna get into tragedies and greek classics! i saw the names emily wilson and caroline alexander come up a couple times in your faq. could you rec me popular/loved translations of the plays? for medea, antigone, iphigenia, elektra, agamemnon, the oresteia? any other tragedy that i forgot to add to this is welcomed too! thank you, sorry for the bother

hi! im less interested in tragedy than epic and so am Way less fussy about particular translations (than i maybe should be) like you can probably just read whatever you can get your hands on. that said! i do recommend the greek plays edited by mary lefkowitz and james romm which has translations by a variety of translators of all the plays you mentioned Except either iphigeneia play. anne carson has a translation of iphigeneia at tauris + her grief lessons (assorted euripides) is cool and sexy. seamus heaney's translations of antigone (the burial at thebes) and philoctetes (the cure at troy) are also v good. hope you found this useful :-)

[hyacinthgirlquotes]

There is much confusion in the workings of the gods as there is among mortals: only one thing hurts, when one who has good sense has listened to the words of prophets and is ruined, as the wise men know.

Iphigeneia in Tauris by Euripides

[siena-sevenwits]

I'm back to reading "Iphigeneia in Tauris" by Euripides, and there's a very interesting passage just after she's learned that she will have to play a part in sacrificing two young men to the goddess Artemis, much against her will.

“But I hate the sly cleverness of this goddess! She deems unclean anyone who has touched with his hands the blood of someone murdered or a corpse, or a woman who is in labour and forbids them from approaching her altars, yet she herself rejoices in the sacrifices of mortals! How could anyone believe that Leto, Zeus’s bride, could have given birth to such a foolish creature? And I don’t believe the story about that feast that Tantalus gave to the gods, where, supposedly, the gods had enjoyed eating the flesh of his own son. No, I think these people here, the Taurians are a murderous lot and they use the goddess as an excuse for their bloody deeds. I don’t believe at all that any of the gods is evil.”

This is interesting! That a character in a Greek mythological work casts doubt on the stories of the sins of the gods, even going so far to say that she doesn't believe the gods can be evil.

What gave her that sense? She has been made to work as a priestess in a temple where the bones and armour from human sacrifices are used as decoration, and the altar is dyed red with human blood - clearly an evil place. Has this given her lots of time to ponder on what a god is and what a human's relationship to a god should be? Do the screams of the temple contrast with some natural sense in her heart of who a god must be? Has she a natural sense that godhood is innately full of goodness by its nature is full of goodness?

I don't know. I'll be interested to see if Euripides fleshes this out or leaves it as a tantalizing thread.

[woodsteingirl]

i have this natural gift and it’s called “my poems i write without reading a connected piece of literature to the thing it’s based on have a weird way of being almost exactly like that despite me never having read it.”

[nimiana]

Agustín Gómez-Arcos - The Carnivorous Lamb / Euripides - Iphigeneia in Tauris, tr. Kenneth McLeish / Michael Cacoyannis - Iphigenia / Gania Barlow - Clytemnestra / @florenceros.e on instagram / Erin Endicott - The Healing Sutras (2010) / @filmnoirsbian - 6 ways to draw a circle on wikihow / Marina and the Diamonds - Guilty

[lionofchaeronea]

A scene from Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, showing Orestes between Pylades and Iphigeneia. Fresco from the triclinium of the procurator in the Casa del Centenario, Pompeii.

[festito]

god if we’re talking about greek mythology/vg parallels....

what about orestes and pylades? i know some mfer has probably stuck the quote from euripides’ ‘iphigeneia in tauris’ (translated by anne carson) into one of their ww posts but there is so much more. (quote is right below)

these words say so much. this? this is the quote that says “i love you more than either of us can ever understand. i choose to take care of you. i choose to stay, here, with you.” if i left it at that, it would already say so much. but there’s more.

orestes and pylades were synonymous with love and loyalty. they had been friends and companions from the very time of their birth and remained so all throughout their lives. they took a god of love to act as witness of the passion between them. i mean. that’s homoeroticism right there.

pylades would follow orestes to the ends of the earth. pylades would stay with orestes if it meant death. pylades would die for orestes.

but orestes—beloved orestes—ultimately chooses to die for pylades instead. one of them must be slain as a sacrifice to artemis. iphigenia, priestess of artemis and orestes’ sister, offers orestes an alternative. he can go deliver a letter for her, and live. pyrades will be slain instead.

and orestes refuses, because of course he would. of course orestes would choose pylades’ life over his own. both of them wish to remain to save the life of the other.

it’s about choosing to stay with the other person

(anything for you, valdez. / not to me. not if it’s you.). 

choosing their partner’s life over their own

(to storm or fire / to pylades or orestes)

as lucian says in his ‘erotes’: “[when the] long-loved object returns reciprocal affection, [it] is hard to determine which the lover of which, for – as from a mirror – the affection of the lover is reflected from the beloved.”

[hyacinthgirlquotes]

Where do you come from, O unhappy travellers? You have sailed a great distance in order to reach this land, and far, far from home, must spend eternity below.

Iphigeneia in Tauris by Euripides