The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post.
The united might of Greece, assembled to retrieve Helen and
sack Troy, is paralyzed by a lack of wind.
The remedy, says a psychotic prophet, is for Agamemnon, the host’s
general, to allow said prophet slit the throat of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia
as a human sacrifice to Artemis. What a
sicko, that prophet!
AGAMEMNON: The tribe of prophets wants only to be important,
the whole rotten crowd of them.
MENELAOS: When they don’t prophesy
they’re useless, and when they do
it does no good. (p. 45, Merwin and Dimock)
But by the end everyone, including Iphigeneia, is convinced
that her sacrifice is justified, and she is either murdered on an altar, as
depicted in a drawing owned by the British Museum either copied from or
imitating Rembrandt, or whisked off to distant, barbaric Tauris to eventually
be rescued by her brother Orestes, just a baby in this play, an extraordinarily
ironic baby.
As she speaks the following lines IPHIGENEIA takes ORESTES from CLYTEMNESTRA and holds him up to AGAMEMNON.
My brother, you are so small
to have to help your friends. But cry
with me, cry to your father, beg him
not to kill your sister. See,
even babies sense the dread of evil to come. (78)
The sacrifice of Iphigeneia is the ur-crime of Greek tragedy,
even among the many stores of the sacrifice of teenage girls that fascinated
Euripides. Without her death there is no
Oresteia. Maybe there is no
Trojan War. Perhaps that is why
Euripides saved the story for last.
Part of the horror of the play is that, scene by scene, it
is the story of how Iphigeneia is saved.
Each major character in turn is convinced, by some combination of persuasion
and conscience, not to murder a teenager to prosecute a war, and then
reverts due to fear and expediency, culminating in a farcical utilitarianism, the
trolley problem: we must sacrifice one life to save many. In fact, of course, the first death causes
the deaths of many.
The modern Athenians, watching the play, had long abandoned
human sacrifice at the altar, but had spent almost thirty years, urged on by
politicians arguing much like those in the play, sacrificing their young men in
a pointless war. The sacrifice would end
soon enough, though, the very next year, not because the Athenians were finally
convinced by Euripides but because of a crushing, final defeat by the Spartans.
Iphigeneia in Aulis was our final Euripides play, but
this is not our farewell to Euripides.
Next week: it’s The Frogs by Aristophanes, where we will find the
most famous chorus in Greek literature and, decades before Aristotle, the
invention of Western literary criticism, or at least the important part, the Top
3 list. If you have been reading all, or
most, or even a decent random sample, of the tragedies than you are the perfect
reader for The Frogs. You have
earned The Frogs.
"farcical utilitarianism" is a good phrase.
ReplyDeleteHow I hate the trolley problem. This play would be superb for teaching logical fallacies. I suppose that is true of most Greek tragedies.
ReplyDeleteEveryone reasons poorly in this play, except maybe Clytemnestra (who is here not the villain Aeschylus gives us). This is also a masterclass in dramatic irony; the ironies in Iphigenia's speech where she accepts her fate are just crushing. So young and naive. I think you are right about Euripides' intent to draw attention to the sacrifice of Athens' youth to pointless war fought for no good reason. Achilles is young and patriotic, getting mixed messages about what is right and wrong, finally giving in to the armed mob who want the war no matter the cost. The cost seems small at Aulis, another irony.
ReplyDeleteThe sophistry, and the resulting ironies, are outrageous.
ReplyDeleteA fitting end for Euripides's (extant) career. I like the description of the sacrifice as the "ur-crime" of Greek tragedy - I was tempted to think of it as the Original Sin. (And in the cruel whims of an indifferent God demanding the sacrifice of a child, it reminded me of another Old Testament reference, Abraham and Isaac - all the more so in the version in which Iphigenia is miraculously saved at the end.)
ReplyDeleteAs so often with Euripides, the play seems deliberately ambiguous in its authorial stance, at least to me. Aristotle calls the character of Iphigenia inconsistent, but I'm tempted to say that's the point - nobody could surely believe that the girl pleading for her life would suddenly decide to sacrifice herself for the good of Greece, so there's something wrong with the whole premise of these characters, this religion, this nation.
I saw a performance of The Taming Of The Shrew a while ago where Katherina's final speech, on why wives should obey their husbands, was presented as if she had been brainwashed. You could easily play this the same way - put an actor playing Artemis on the balcony holding puppet strings. Put Ares next to her, since one of the choruses makes it sound like the Trojan War is entirely his fight.
There's a French play from the 1930s, The Trojan War Will Not Take Place by Giraudoux, in which the tragedy is, of course, that it does. As much as the death of Iphigenia herself, that seems to be the tragedy here too. And yet, at the same time, these are maybe the most sympathetic versions of Agamemnon and Menelaus that we've seen.
So ambiguous - as you say, the premise is obviously wrong, and everyone seems to know it, yet everyone insidiously converts. Horrifying. Puppets are a good idea.
ReplyDeleteGiraudoux's play is unusual. A professional diplomat's play about the uselessness of diplomacy.