ollection ollection

religions religions
religions
Comparatisme – Histoire – Anthropologie

L’étude critique et scientifique des religions, conquise de haute lutte, se situe à la croisée
des méthodes historique et anthropologique, et favorise le comparatisme.
2
Placée sous la direction d’Annick Delfosse et de Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, la collection « Religions »
aborde les faits et phénomènes religieux dans leur diversité, en dehors de toute vision essentialiste,

Sacrifices
ce qu’évoquent à la fois le pluriel du nom et les trois termes qui le précisent.

Sacrifices humains s Human sacrifice

Le thème du sacrifice humain ne peut laisser indifférent
et continue de susciter bien des interrogations, entre
fascination et dégoût. Historiens et anthropologues
se divisent sur l’historicité supposée du phénomène.
Pour sortir de l’impasse, cet ouvrage se penche sur la
manière dont les cultures se représentent le sacrifice
humain, le leur ou celui des autres, fût-il réel ou sym-
Pierre Bonnechere – Renaud Gagné
humains
others, either as an event or a symbol. How does a soci-
ety confront what might have been –or what it thought
was– its own cruel and bloody past? What are the cultur-
ally specific values through which human sacrifice was
understood in each group, and how did they differ in the
case of other related practices, such as anthropophagy?
How have these perceptions changed over time, and

Human
bolique. Comment une société fait-elle face à ce qui est how have they adapted to the transformations of

– ou ce qu’elle croit être – son passé cruel et sanglant ?
Quelles sont les valeurs dont le sacrifice humain, et
d’autres concepts proches, comme l’anthropophagie,
se trouvent chargés en vertu des normes indigènes  ?
Comment ces perceptions ont-elles persisté dans la
longue durée et comment se sont-elles adaptées aux
idéologies changeantes ? Le cœur du volume est consa-
cré au dossier hellénique, remarquablement documen-
té par les Grecs eux-mêmes. À ce dossier répondent en
contrepoint plusieurs articles sur la Chine ancienne, les
Aztèques, et la Rome antique, qui projettent un regard
différent et sont autant de raisons de remettre cent fois
sur le métier cet objet fascinant.
The topic of human sacrifice, which tends to provoke
both fascination and disgust, leaves few people indif-
ferent and remains a highly contested academic issue.
The present volume is not concerned with the historical
reality of human sacrifice, a question that continues
to divide historians and anthropologists. Rather, it is
interested in how different ancient cultures represented
human sacrifice differently, both theirs and that of
sacrifice
ideology? The core of the volume is concerned with
the abundantly detailed material of ancient Greece.
The Greek evidence and its interpretation are chal-
lenged by various articles on the ancient practice and its
representation in other ancient cultures, China, Aztec
Mesoamerica, and imperial Rome, which offer funda-
mentally different viewpoints, and provide a myriad of
occasions for reflecting on contrast and the need to con-
stantly question the fundamental terms of our analysis.
Pierre BONNECHERE, spécialiste de la religion et
des mentalités grecques, enseigne l’histoire grecque
Pierre Bonnechere – Renaud Gagné
au Département d’Histoire de l’Université de Mon-
tréal. Ses thèmes de prédilection sont le sacrifice et la
divination, ainsi que l’histoire des jardins.
Renaud GAGNÉ, a specialist of early Greek poetry
and religion, teaches Greek literature in the Faculty
of Classics at the University of Cambridge. He is a
co-editor of Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy
(2013) and the author of Ancestral Fault in Ancient
Greece (2013).

presses universitaires de liège

ISBN : 978-2-87562-021-7

9 782875 620217

Vol.2-4.indd 1 26/04/13 09:23

 Sacrifices humains
Perspectives croisées et représentations

Human sacrifice
Cross-cultural perspectives and representations
Couverture : La pierre du soleil aztèque. Mexico, Musée National d’Anthropologie
© Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.,
wwww.famsi.org.

Dépôt légal D/2013/12.839/3

ISBN 978-2-87562-021-7
© Copyright Presses Universitaires de Liège 2013
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Imprimé en Belgique
 Collection Religions
Comparatisme – Histoire – Anthropologie
2

Sacrifices humains
Perspectives croisées et représentations

Human sacrifice
Cross-cultural perspectives and representations

édité par / edited by

Pierre BONNECHERE – Renaud GAGNÉ

Presses Universitaires de Liège

2013
 Table des matières / Table of contents

Pierre BONNECHERE, Renaud GAGNÉ

Introduction. Le sacrifice humain : un phénomène au fil d’Ariane
évanescent ...................................................................................................................7

Pierre BONNECHERE
Victime humaine et absolue perfection dans la mentalité grecque ................. 21

Joannis MYLONOPOULOS
Gory Details? The Iconography of Human Sacrifice in Greek Art .................. 61

Jan N. BREMMER
Human Sacrifice in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris:
Greek and Barbarian .................................................................................................... 87

Renaud GAGNÉ
Athamas and Zeus Laphystios: Herodotus 7.197 ............................................. 101

Albert HENRICHS
Répandre le sang sur l’autel : ritualisation de la violence
dans le sacrifice grec ............................................................................................. 119

Robert C.T. PARKER

Substitution in Greek Sacrifice ........................................................................... 145

Robin D.S. YATES

Human Sacrifice and the Rituals of War in Early China ................................. 153

Griet VANKEERBERGHEN
“Yellow Bird” and the Discourse of Retainer Sacrifice in China .................... 175

Louise I. PARADIS
La représentation des sacrifices humains par les Aztèques
et les Espagnols : une image vaut mille mots ................................................ 205

Bill GLADHILL
The Poetics of Human Sacrifice in Vergil’s Aeneid ......................................... 217
6 TABLE DES MATIÈRES / TABLE OF CONTENTS

Liste des illustrations / List of figures ...................................................................... 247

Bibliographie sélective / Select bibliography .......................................................... 249

Generalia .......................................................................................................... 249
Chine / Ancient China ................................................................................... 252
Amérique centrale / Mesoamerica ................................................................ 256
Mondes grec et romain / Greece and Rome ................................................ 257

À propos des auteurs / About the authors .............................................................. 265

Planches / Plates ......................................................................................................... 267

 Human Sacrifice in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris:
Greek and Barbarian

Jan N. BREMMER
Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen

Students of representations of human sacrifice in ancient Greece are in the rather

unique situation that we not only have the description of Iphigeneia’s sacrifice in
Aulis by Euripides in his Iphigeneia in Aulis, but also reflections on this sacrifice
by Iphigeneia herself in his Iphigeneia in Tauris (hereafter cited as IA and IT). In
addition, we have descriptions of her role in the impending sacrifice of Orestes
and allusions to the sacrifices already performed by the Taurians. In my
contribution I intend to look at all three sacrifices. Given that Orestes was going
to be sacrificed by a foreign people, the Taurians, an important question will be
whether Euripides pictured his fate in different colours from that of Iphigeneia in
the same play.
Let us start with Iphigeneia herself. The play begins with Iphigeneia’s genealo-
gy, which in itself is full of names that bode no good: Tantalus, Pelops (1), Atreus
(3), Agamemnon (4), Clytaemnestra (5): in other words, cannibalism, fratricide,
homicide, matricide. It is hardly surprising, then, that immediately after these
names we hear of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia: ‘whom, near the eddies which the
Euripus with its frequent breezes sets rolling, churning up the dark-blue sea, my
father slaughtered (esphaxen) for Helen’s sake, so he believes, to Artemis in the
famous clefts of Aulis’ (8-9).1 Apparently, the grove of Artemis’ sanctuary was

1. My translations are taken from D. Kovacs’ translation in the Loeb (1999), although regularly
adapted or corrected. I only refer with the name of the author to the standard commentaries
of M. PLATNAUER, Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, Oxford, 1938; M. CROPP, Euripides,
Iphigeneia in Tauris, Warminster, 2000 and P. KYRIAKOU, A Commentary on Euripides’
Iphigenia in Tauris, Berlin, 2006. For the play see more recently also J.C.G. STRACHAN,
“Iphigenia and Human Sacrifice in Euripides’ Iphigenia Taurica,” CPh 71 (1976), p. 131-140;
C. WOLFF, “Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians: Aetiology, Ritual, and Myth,” ClAnt 11
(1992), p. 308-334; S. STERN-GILLETT, “Exile, Displacement and Barbarity in Euripides’
Iphigenia among the Taurians,” Scholia 10 (2001), p. 4-21; M. GUZMÁN, “Ifigenia xenoktonos,”
Faventia 30 (2008), p. 223-240; A. TADDEI, “Inno e pratiche rituali in Euripide: il caso dell’
Ifigenia tra I Tauri,” Paideia 64 (2009), p. 235-252; E. HALL, “Iphigenia in Oxyrhynchus and
India: Greek tragedy for everyone,” in G.M. SIFAKIS, S. TSITSIRIDES (eds.), Parachoregema,
88 JAN N. BREMMER

situated close to the sea,2 as we also hear in IA (185-302) and elsewhere in IT (213).
The mention of the sea and the beach is not by chance, as both will come back
repeatedly in the play. At the same time, they tell us something about the nature of
Artemis’ sanctuaries, which were often situated near water.3
Yet the word that makes us shiver is ‘slaughtered’. In Greek sacrificial termi-
nology thyein, ‘to sacrifice’, is the unmarked term that epitomizes the sacrificial
process as a whole, whereas sphazein, ‘to cut the throat’, refers more specifically to
the act of slaughtering the animal in a specific manner. As the marked term,
sphazein carries ‘associations of violence and bloodshed that the tragedians
exploit’.4 To evoke the brutal nature of her sacrifice Iphigenia does not shrink back
from using the term ‘slaughtering’, as she does when letting Calchas announce her
fateful sacrifice (20), even though he otherwise uses the terminology of thyein (21,
24). Thus she also closes her second big speech with the words ‘I lie in luckless
slaughter (sphachteisa)’ (177), and these verses are only the beginning of
Iphigeneia’s recurrent usage of the term ‘slaughter’ for her sacrifice (339, 360, 563,
770, 919): the audience is left in no doubt about the gruesomeness of that particular
deed.
However, Iphigeneia goes further than just mentioning her sacrifice. In Greek
sacrifice the victim had to be perfect and undamaged, and in the myths of human
sacrifice the victim is always special.5 In Euripides’ Hecuba, Polyxena died, ‘of
captives the choicest and most beautiful maiden’ (267-68), as her mother Hecuba
called her or, as she said herself, ‘amidst the maidens conspicuous, like the gods in
all but my mortality’ (355-56). This is also the rule in human scapegoat sacrifices

Heraklion, 2010, p. 225-250. For the visual evidence see L. KAHIL et al., “Iphigeneia I, II,” in
LIMC V.1 (1990), p. 706-729 at 713-718, 722-729; N. ICARD-GIANOLIO, “Iphigeneia,” in LIMC,
Suppl. 1, p. 296.
2. For sacred groves see D.E. BIRGE, Sacred groves in the ancient Greek world, Diss. Berkeley,
1982; F. GRAF, Nordionische Kulte, Rome, 1985, p. 43; C. JACOB, “Paysage et bois sacré : ἄλσος
dans la Périégèse de la Grèce de Pausanias,” in J. SCHEID (ed.), Les Bois sacrés, Naples, 1993,
p. 31-44; V.J. MATTHEWS, Antimachus of Colophon, Leiden, 1996, p. 141-142; P. BONNECHERE,
“The Place of the Sacred Grove in the Mantic Rituals of Greece: The Example of the Oracle of
Trophonios at Lebadeia (Boeotia),” in M. CONAN (ed.), Sacred Gardens and Landscapes: Ritual
and Agency, Washington DC, 2007, p. 17-41.
3. S.G. COLE, Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space, Berkeley et al., 2004, p. 191-194.
4. A. HENRICHS, “Drama and Dromena: Bloodshed, Violence, and Sacrificial Metaphor in
Euripides,” HSCPh 100 (2000), p. 173-188 at 180, referring to M. JAMESON et al., A Lex Sacra
from Selinous, Durham, 1993, p. 17: B 12-3; see also my “Myth and Ritual in Greek Human
Sacrifice: Lykaon, Polyxena and the Case of the Rhodian Criminal,” in J.N. BREMMER (ed.), The
Strange World of Human Sacrifice, Leuven, 2007, p. 55-79 at 60-61. For sphazô and related words
see J. CASABONA, Recherches sur le vocabulaire des sacrifices en grec, Paris, 1966, p. 155-196.
5. Aristotle, fr. 101 Rose & Gigon; Plutarchus, Moralia, 437b; Lucian, De Sacrificiis, 12;
Pausanias 10.35.4; Pollux 1.29; Scholiast on Demosthenes 21.171. For more references, see
P. BONNECHERE in this volume.
 HUMAIN SACRIFICE IN EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS 89

where the beauty of the victim is often stressed.6 And indeed, when talking to
Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra calls Iphigeneia an exhaireton, ‘chosen, unique’,
sphageion in IA (1199-1200).7 It is not surprising, then, that in the prologue
Iphigeneia relates how Agamemnon promised the ‘fairest thing the year would
bring forth’ to the ‘light-bearing goddess’ 19-21), and how Calchas interpreted her
as being that ‘fairest thing’ (23). Commentators variously explain the epithet of
Artemis, ‘light-bearing’, as a reference to her being the moon-goddess, to her
carrying torches when hunting at night or to her identification with Hecate,8 but
these interpretations misjudge the irony of the situation. Artemis Phosphoros was
the goddess of salvation in difficult situations for the community.9 As such,
Agamemnon evidently needed her, not knowing what his real sacrifice would be.
Finally, she also informs us about the way she was sacrificed: ‘held aloft
above the sacrificial hearth I was being killed with a sword’ (26-27). Richard
Buxton comments: ‘hanging in the air: between marriage and death’.10 This is of
course true, but we should also note that Iphigeneia refers here to the normal
sacrificial procedure of lifting up a victim ‘in the way of the Greeks’ (Eur. Helen
1562).11 That is how she was sacrificed in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, where the chorus
tells us: ‘Her supplications, her cries of ‘Father’ and her virgin life, the commanders
in their eagerness for battle reckoned as naught. Her father, after a prayer, directed
his servants to lift the maiden like a she-goat wrapped in her clothes with her face
downwards’.12 This is also how we see Polyxena at the beginning of the sixth

6. J.N. BREMMER, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East, Leiden, 2008,
p. 181.
7. Note that Kovacs in his translation takes exhaireton as qualifying Agamemnon (‘you alone’)
but that is not the natural reading. Clytemnestra here contrasts the outcome of a lottery with
that of a “chosen” victim.
8. Cf. PLATNAUER, o.c. (n. 1): moon goddess; similarly C.P. TRIESCHNIGG, “Iphigenia’s Dream in
Euripides’ Iphigenia Taurica,” CQ 58 (2008), p. 461-478 at 473, KOVACS, o.c. (n. 1): carrying
torches, CROPP, o.c. (n. 1) and KYRIAKOU, o.c. (n. 1): Hecate on Iphigenia Taurica 21.
9. F. GRAF, Nordionische Kulte, Rome, 1985, p. 228-236.
10. R. BUXTON, “Iphigénie au bord de la mer,” Pallas 38 (1992), p. 209-215 at 210.
11. See the bibliography in HENRICHS, l.c. (n. 4), p. 187 n. 61; add F. GRAF, “Apollon Delphinios,”
MH 36 (1979), p. 2-22 at 14-15; J. GEBAUER, Pompe und Thysia. Attische Tieropferdarstellun-
gen auf schwarz- und rotfigurigen Vasen, Münster, 2002, p. 179-181.
12. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 227-235, to be read with the observations by P. MAAS, Kleine
Schriften, Munich, 1973, p. 42; S. RADT in A. HARDER et al. (eds.), Noch einmal zu… Kleine
Schriften von Stefan Radt zu seinen 75. Geburtstag, Leiden, 2002² [1973], p. 111 (19731); F.
DELNERI, “Cassandra e Ifigenia (Aesch. Ag. 1121-1124; 231-247),” Eikasmos 12 (2001), p. 55-
62; S. TIMPANARO, Contributi di filologia greca e latina, Florence, 2005, p. 70-79; A. HENRICHS ,
“Blutvergiessen am Altar: Zur Ritualisierung der Gewalt im griechischen Opferkult,” in
B. SEIDENSTICKER, M. VÖHLER (eds.), Gewalt und Ästhetik. Zur Gewalt und ihrer Darstellung in
der griechischen Klassik, Berlin-New York, 2006, p. 59-87 at 67-74 (translated in this volume).
90 JAN N. BREMMER

century, on at least one archaic Attic vase, with Neoptolemos actually cutting her
throat with his sword, and her blood visibly flowing (Pl. V).13
Platnauer, Cropp and Kyriakou (ad loc.) all try to do justice to the imperfect
sense of ekainomên (27) by translating with ‘they started to kill me’, ‘ready for the
knife’ or ‘tried to kill me’, respectively. And indeed, although myth could also
suggest a real death of Iphigeneia, as did Pindar in his Pythian Ode 11 (22-23) and
Aeschylus in his Agamemnon,14 in our play Iphigeneia regularly talks in language of
appearing to have been killed, but actually was not. This starts already at the very
beginning, when she states that her father was in the process of slaughtering her, ‘as
it seems’ (8; note also 176, 831). Somewhat later in the play she adds that she
supplicated her father by touching his chin (362),15 but to no avail, as the Greeks
‘manhandled me like a calf and were going to slit my throat, and the priest was the
father who begot me’ (359-60). Iphigeneia compares herself here to a calf, a more
expensive and stately victim than the cheap she-goat of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
(232).16 Also in the next lines she stresses that her father was in the process of
killing her (366: katakteinontos; the same verb in 565) and that she was perishing by
his hands (368). That is also why she can say in the letter she wants to give to
Pylades that ‘here are the words of her who was slain in Aulis, Iphigeneia, who is
alive, though to them there (the Greeks) no longer alive’ (771), and Orestes can ask
if she has come back from the grave (772). That is also why Iphigeneia says that
Agamemnon sacrificed the doe, ‘thinking that it was into me that he had plunged
his sharp sword’ (785), but although her father had already ‘put the sword to my
throat’ (853-854), Artemis ‘saved me from the terrible murderous hand of my
father’ (1083).

13. N. SEVINÇ, “A New Sarcophagus of Polyxena,” Studia Troica 6 (1996), p. 251-264; J.-L. DURAND,
F. LISSARRAGUE, “Mourir à l’autel,” ARG 1 (1999), p. 83-106 at 97-98; G. SCHWARZ, “Der Tod und
das Mädchen: frühe Polyxena-Bilder,” MDAI(A) 116 (2001), p. 35-50; C. REINSBERG, “Wilde
Mädchen, schöne Braut. Der Polyxena-Sarkophag in Çanakkale,” in R. BOL, D. KREIKENBOM
(eds.), Sepulkral- und Votivdenkmäler östlicher Mittelmeergebiete (7. Jh. V. Chr. – 1. Jh. N. Chr.),
Möhnesee-Wamel, 2004, p. 199-217; BREMMER, o.c. (n. 6); P. LINANT DE BELLEFONDS, “Polyxene,”
in LIMC, Suppl. I, p. 430-432, no. add. 5*.
14. Both perhaps depended on Stesichorus’ Oresteia, cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 2, 141 (ed.
E. FRAENKEL, 3 vols, Oxford, 1951, n. 3); B. GENTILI et al., Pindaro, Le Pitiche, Milano, 1995,
p. 284; note also Sophocles, Electra, 530-532; Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.84-86; Seneca,
Agamemnon, 162-164. P. BONNECHERE, Le Sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne, Athens-Liège,
1994, p. 42 suggests that these passages present the point of view of those who don’t know that
Iphigeneia has been saved. This is not implausible, but the loss of much pre-Euripidean
evidence makes me hesitant to reject the possibility that myth could envisage a real death.
15. The passage seems to have been overlooked by F.S. NAIDEN, Ancient Supplication, Oxford, 2006,
p. 47-49, 316, just like it is absent from his enumeration of children supplicating parents (p. 35).
16. Thus, rightly, KYRIAKOU, o.c. (n. 1).
 HUMAIN SACRIFICE IN EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS 91

Kovacs translates the Greek phasganon in line 785 with ‘knife’, but this
misjudges the ritual. Iphigeneia herself has mentioned several times that she was
killed with a sword (27, 785, 853-4). Orestes also presupposes that he himself will
be killed with a sword, (621), as do Iphigeneia (880) and King Thoas (1190). And
when Athena instructs Orestes about the new festival in Halai, she says; ‘when the
people holds festival, in compensation for your slaying, let them hold a sword to a
man’s neck’ (1458-1460).17 And indeed, as we can see from a number of vases,
Iphigeneia and Polyxena are not killed by priests, who would have used a sacrificial
knife, machaira, but in a military context by warriors, who use a sword, xiphos
(Pl. IIb, IIIa-b, V, VIa-b).18
Artemis put a deer in Iphigeneia’s place (28, 784), as is the traditional
version,19 and brought her through the air to ‘the land of the Taurians (28-30).
The tone for this place is immediately set by her adding: ‘where Thoas rules, a
barbarian over barbarians’ (31-32). Here Artemis made her into her priestess (34,
1399), but now the chorus calls itself ‘servant of the holy key-bearer’ (131; note
also 1463). Keys were the sign of the office of priestess in ancient Greece,20 but
Athenian priestesses became pictured with keys only in the later fifth century,21
and the term ‘key-holder’ here is perhaps one more indication of the rising visual
importance of the key. As a priestess Iphigeneia had to be pure and could not be
touched by a murderer,22 and she therefore rejected Orestes’ attempt to embrace
her after he had recognised her (798-799).
Although Iphigeneia is a priestess, her task is limited: ‘I start the sacrifice
(katarchomai) of any Greek man who comes to this land, but the cutting of the

17. R. PARKER, Polytheism and Athenian Society, Oxford, 2005, p. 241 translates with ‘knife’.
18. DURAND – LISSARRAGUE, l.c. (n. 13), p. 91, 105.
19. For the various versions of the myth of Iphigeneia see J.N. BREMMER, “Sacrificing a Child in
Ancient Greece: the Case of Iphigeneia,” in E. NOORT, E.J.C. TIGCHELAAR (eds.), The Sacrifice
of Isaac, Leiden, 2001, p. 21-43; G. EKROTH, “Inventing Iphigeneia? On Euripides and the
Cultic Construction of Brauron,” Kernos 16 (2003), p. 59-118; C. CHANDEZON, “Particularités
du culte isiaque dans la basse vallée du Céphise (Béotie et Phocide),” in N. BADOUD (ed.),
Philologos Dionysios. Mélanges offerts au professeur Denis Knoepfler, Genève, 2011, p. 149-182.
20. A.G. MANTIS, Problemata tes eikonographias ton iereion kai ton iereon sten archaia Ellenike
techne, Athene, 1990, p. 28-65; S. GEORGOUDI, “Athanatous therapeuein. Réflexions sur des
femmes au service des dieux,” in V. DASEN M. PIÉRART (eds.), Les Cadres “privés” et “publics”
de la religion grecque antique, Liège, 2005 (Kernos, suppl. 15), p. 69-82 at 80-82; J.B. CONNEL-
LY, Portrait of a Priestess, Princeton-London, 2007, p. 92-104.
21. R. VON DEN HOFF, “Images of Cult Personnel in Athens between the Sixth and First Centuries
BC,” in B. DIGNAS, K. TRAMPEDACH (eds.), Practitioners of the Divine, Cambridge-London,
2008, p. 107-141 at 110-111, 117; for a representation of Iphigeneia in Tauris with the key, see
GEBAUER, o.c. (n. 11), p. 242-243.
22. For the purity of the priestess see R. PARKER, Miasma, Oxford, 1983, p. 175-176.
92 JAN N. BREMMER

throat is the concern of others’ (39-40).23 The ‘start’ of a sacrifice especially

consisted of sprinkling the victim with water, but also of throwing barley-groats on
it.24 This also appears from the fact that when telling her dream next, she mentions
sprinkling a pillar of her ancestral home, which assumed the shape of a human
head and started to speak, ‘to consign it to death’, as ‘she practices religiously this
office I have of killing foreigners’ (52-54, note also 58). Similarly, when the
herdsman announces the capture of Pylades and Orestes to Iphigeneia, he adds that
they are ‘a sacrifice and offering dear to the goddess Artemis. It is high time to
prepare the lustral water and the barley groats’ (243-245). King Thoas, too, takes
one look at the two friends and then orders them ‘to be speedily sprinkled and
slaughtered’ (334), haste that he displays several times in the play (1080-1081, 1153-
1154, 1190), unlike Iphigeneia who explicitly is depicted as having pity with the
fated foreigners (344-345). And when Orestes discusses his sacrifice with
Iphigeneia, she tells him that she will not kill him, but start the procedure by
sprinkling him with water (622; note also 644-645). It is only natural, then, that she
remembers with horror her own sprinkling in Aulis (861).
It is understandable that Euripides does not want to make Iphigeneia respon-
sible for the murder of Greeks, although Greek priestesses could sacrifice: sacrificial
knives have been found in the graves of female cult personnel.25 Yet the chorus
could imagine Helen dying by their ‘lady’s throat-cutting hand’ (445), and
Iphigeneia herself mentions a tablet written by a prisoner, ‘who did not think that
mine was the murderous hand’ (585-586). Moreover, she clearly wishes that the
winds would bring Helen and Menelaus, who she sees as the main causes of her
‘death’ (356) so that she can take vengeance on them (356-360). In fact, she gives
Orestes the impression that she would kill him (617) and only denies giving the
fatal blow when properly asked (621-622). And when she had recognized Orestes,
she said: ‘barely did you escape the unholy fate of slaughter at my hands’ (872-873),
and later: ‘by rescuing you I would keep my hand from shedding your blood’ (994-
995). In short, technically Iphigeneia may perhaps not have killed prisoners, she
clearly came very close.
More information about the human sacrifice we receive from the first dialogue
between Orestes and Pylades. They immediately make clear that human sacrifice is

23. As many editors and commentators have seen, lines 40-41 should be deleted; see most recently
W.S. BARRETT, Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism. Collected Papers, M.L. WEST (ed.),
Oxford, 2007, p. 474-479.
24. Cf. Odyssey 3.445; Euripides, Iphigenia Aulidensis, 955; P. STENGEL, Opferbräuche der
Griechen, Leipzig, Berlin, 1910, p. 40-47, overlooked by KYRIAKOU, o.c. (n. 1), p. 110.
25. For priestesses and sacrifice see now U. KRON, “Frauenfeste in Demeterheiligtümern: das
Thesmophorion von Bitalemi,” AA (1992), p. 611-650 at 640-643, 650; R. OSBORNE, “Women
and Sacrifice in Classical Greece,” in R. BUXTON (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion,
Oxford, 2000, p. 294-313; CONNELLY, o.c. (n. 20), p. 179-190.
 HUMAIN SACRIFICE IN EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS 93

still practised in Tauris, as Pylades informs Orestes that the top of the altar is blood-
stained (73). Stains of blood are prominently present on altars in a number of vase-
paintings as the lasting proof of the otherwise perishable gifts to the gods.26
Moreover, as if this is not enough, Orestes asks: ‘and right under the top, thrinkois,
do you see trophies hanging?’ (74). Platnauer, Kovacs, Cropp and Kyriakou all
suppose that he is referring to the copings of the altar, but the Greek word thrinkos,
which is curiously popular in Euripides in the period 417-412,27 is always used of
walls of houses and palaces,28 never of altars.
Orestes probably pointed to the nearby temple. In the course of the play we
also hear of its high walls (96-7), bronze doors (99) and ‘lovely pillars and gilded
cornice (thrinkous)’ (128-129: see above); it fits this description that we later also
hear of its colonnade (405). There can be no doubt that the impression is given of
an imposing and wonderful temple, which makes the purpose for which it is used
the more appalling.29 The trophies, as Pylades explains, are the ‘akrothinia, the
‘best parts’ (cf. 459), of the foreigners who have been killed’ (75). The language is
somewhat vague, but the reference must have been clear to the audience through
the scenery. And indeed, as Ammianus Marcellinus tells us, the Taurians sacrificed
strangers to Artemis and ‘fixed the heads of the slaughtered to the walls of the
temple’ (22.8.34).30
The inhospitability of the place is also stressed by the frequent mention of the
Black Sea as the Pontos Axeinos, the ‘Inhospitable Sea’ (125, 218, 253, 341, 1388). As
has long been realised, axeinos is the Greek rendering of Iranian *axšaina-, ‘dark
coloured’. Following an archaic system in which the four cardinal points are
designated in a symbolic manner by colour names, the Achaemenid Empire called
its northern sea the ‘Black Sea’ and its southern sea the ‘Red Sea ‘, a system that still
survives to the modern day not only in the names for these seas, but also in the

26. Blood: Aeschylus, Septem contra Thebas, 275; Bacchylides, Epinicia 11.110-112; Lycophron,
Alexandra, 991-992; Lucian, De Sacrificiis, 9.13; Pollux 1.27; Porphyry, De abstinentia 1.25.
Vase-paintings: GEBAUER, o.c. (n. 11), p. 204-205; G. EKROTH, “Blood on the Altars? On the
Treatment of Blood at Greek Sacrifices and the Iconographical Evidence,” AK 48 (2005), p. 9-29.
27. SOMMERSTEIN on Aristophanes, Thesmophoria, 58. This fits a date of around 414-412, as
suggested by Cropp and Kyriakou.
28. Odyssey 7.87, 17.267; Euripides, Electra, 1151; Ion, 156, 1321; Helen, 430; Orestes, 1569,
cf. J. JANNORAY, “Nouvelles inscriptions de Lébadée,” BCH 64-65 (1940-41), p. 38-40 at 39
n. 3.
29. For the imaginary character of the temple see J. ROUX, “A propos du décor dans les tragédies
d’Euripide,” REG 74 (1961), p. 25-60 at 52-60.
30. Although a literary tradition cannot be excluded, Ammianus may well have drawn on an
iconographical tradition as heads are regularly shown suspended from the walls of the temple,
cf. KAHIL, l.c. (n. 1), no. 29 (Campanian ampora, 330-320 BC), nos. 75 and 79 (Antoninian
sarcophagi); I. KRAUSKOPF, “Iphigeneia (in Etruria),” in LIMC V.1 (1990) p. 729-734 at nos. 22-
23 (funerary urns, second century BC).
94 JAN N. BREMMER

qualification of, for instance, Western Russia as ‘White Russia’ and, perhaps,
Albion, as the island to the west of Europe’s mainland.31
When the herdsman reports how they captured Orestes and Pylades, he tells
Iphigeneia: ‘Pray, girl, that you receive such foreign victims. If you kill, analiskêis,
foreigners like these, Greece will be punished for your murder, paying the penalty
for your slaughter at Aulis’ (336-339). The language of the herdsman rises to the
occasion, as the verb he uses for the act of killing, analiskô, indicates the complete
annihilation of the subject (Kyriakou ad loc.). Revenge, in his thoughts, is total.
Moreover, once again we hear of strangers as the victims of the human sacrifice. In
other words, the implicit suggestion clearly is that the Taurians do not sacrifice
their own folk but only Greeks (39, 72, 346-347, 459, 584-587).
After Orestes and Pylades had arrived at the temple, Iphigeneia orders them
to be untied, as they now are hieroi, ‘holy’ (469), that is, property of the goddess,
and chains have no place in the presence of divinity. In the following dialogue
Iphigeneia tries to find out the name of Orestes, but he avoids straight answers to
her questions. He does remain polite, though, as he first continues to use the
terminology of thysia (491) and thyein (504), whereas Iphigeneia speaks of herself
being ‘slaughtered’ (563). However, when she offers to save him and to sacrifice
Pylades, he becomes more emotional and uses ‘slaughter’ (598), but he soon
recovers himself and continues with thyein (617).
Naturally, Orestes is interested in the disposal of his body. However, Iphige-
neia is not quite explicit here, and we may perhaps think that Euripides did not
find it necessary to imagine this part of the sacrifice in minute detail. One would
have expected something about beheading, but that is not even touched upon,
and neither is the altar mentioned. Iphigeneia just tells him that there will be a
‘sacred fire inside the temple’ (626; see also 726), and then a disposal in a cleft in
one of the cliffs (626). Pylades apparently expects the same fate. He does not
mince words and insists ‘to be slaughtered with Orestes and be cremated with
him’ (685). That is also why Orestes can say: ‘Proclaim to all that I perished at the
hand of an Argive woman, hagnistheis, ‘consecrated’, by murder’ (704-705). The
Greek term usually refers to a complete removal from the human sphere,32 as
indeed will be the effect of his cremation and the disposal of his body. It is clear

31. R. SCHMITT, Selected Onomastic Writings, New York, 2000² [1996], p. 158-163 (“Considera-
tions on the Name of the Black Sea: What Can the Historian Learn from It?”). For the great
antiquity of this, probably Central-Asiatic, system see L. DE SAUSSURE, “L’origine des noms
Mer Rouge, Mer Blanche et Mer Noire,” Le Globe 63 (1924), p. 23-36.
32. Note also kathôsiôsato in 1320, cf. PARKER, o.c. (n. 22), p. 328-329; Sophocles, fr. 116 Radt;
Euripides, fr. 314 Kannicht.
 HUMAIN SACRIFICE IN EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS 95

that Euripides could not imagine Orestes being eaten after his being sacrificed.33
That is why he is represented as being burned like a holocaust.
The theme of human sacrifice, the salvation of Orestes and the recovery of
Iphigeneia is somewhat complicated by the fact that Orestes also mentions that
they have been charged by Apollo to bring back to Athens (see also 1013) the
statue of the goddess, ‘which they say fell from the sky into this temple here’ (87-
88, 977-978, 986, 1384). It was ‘polished’ (111: xeston), which, in Euripidean
linguistic usage,34 often suggests something of stone but can also be said of some-
thing wooden, and it stood on a stone pedestal (997, 1157, 1201). As Iphigeneia
carries it in her arms (1158), it is more likely to have been represented in wood
than in stone. In the play it is usually called agalma (14 times) or bretas (12 times).
The latter term occurs primarily in poetry and suggests an archaic image,35
whereas the unique xoanon (1359) evokes an exotic statue in fifth-century
drama,36 both of which qualities fit the heavenly origin of Artemis’statue.
To save Orestes and steal the statue, Iphigeneia has to take recourse to a
subterfuge. She proposes that she will tell King Thoas that it is not lawful to
sacrifice (of course thyein) Orestes to the goddess, as he is unclean as a matricide
(1033-1037). He and Pylades (1047) need to be purified with seawater (1039), as is
the case with the statue, which had been touched by Orestes (1041). When the king
arrives on stage, he is pictured as a rather gruff person by letting him ask: ‘where is
that Greek porter (pylôros) of this temple?’ (1153). To be a porter usually was the
function of old women,37 and the question shows his disdain of Iphigeneia, even
though she is the priestess. However, when the latter enters the stage, she is
carrying the goddess’ statue in her arms and pulls out all stops in pretending that
the strangers have disturbed the holiness of the temple (1168-9), which has to be
restored. She spits (1161) and tells the king that the statue of the goddess had
turned away from where it stood (1165, 1179) and even closed its eyes (1167).38
Therefore, the statue and the strangers have to be purified with water from the sea
(1039, 1192-1193), which was the most prized cathartic water in Greece.39

33. Cannibalism is suggested only by Nonnos, Dionysiaca 13.116-119. See P. BONNECHERE in this
volume.
34. Stone: Alcestis, 836; Hercules furens, 782; The Trojan Women, 46; Helen, 986; Orestes, 1387;
Phoenician Women, 1179; fr. 781.9 Kannicht. Wood: Cyclops, 394; The Trojan Women, 534.
35. T. SCHEER, Die Gottheit und ihr Bild, Munich, 2000, p. 24-33.
36. A. DONOHUE, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture, Atlanta, 1986, p. 29; see also SCHEER,
ibid., p. 19-21.
37. J.N. BREMMER, “The Old Women of Ancient Greece,” in J. BLOK, P. MASON (eds.), Sexual
Asymmetry, Studies in Ancient Society, Amsterdam, 1987, p. 191-215 at 193; Euripides, The
Trojan Women, 194-195, Helen, 435-482.
38. Cf. Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili 3.105.3; Tacitus, Histories 1.86; Cassius Dio 46.33.
39. PARKER, o.c. (n. 22), p. 226-227 with n. 108.
96 JAN N. BREMMER

Moreover, the strangers have to be shackled again (1204-1205) and covered

with clothes so that they do not see the sun (1207). We seem to have here a
combination of the custom to veil a polluted person to isolate him and the idea that
polluted persons should not even be in this world.40 That is why also Thoas has to
veil himself to avoid all possible contacts with the matricides (1218; note also 1198,
1342), and even temple guardians or people to be married and pregnant women
have to be out of the way (1227-1228). Iphigeneia will purify the temple with a
torch (1216, 1224), which was a powerful means of purification,41 but, in the typical
Greek way, the bloodshed could be purified only with other blood, in this case that
of newborn lambs (1222).42 This purificatory show is continued at the beach, where
Iphigeneia apparently raises the stakes by claiming to use ‘a secret sacrificial flame
and a secret purification’ (1331-1332). Here ‘she shouted ololygê and intoned
chants in the style of barbarians, acting like a magus, as if she were cleansing blood
guilt’ (1337-1338). Normally, the high, piercing cry ololyge, which Aeschylus in the
Seven against Thebes (269) calls the ‘Greek custom of the sacrifice cry’ (ololygmos),43
was raised by women when the victim was killed.44 Here it suggests the moment of
killing the lambs for acquiring the blood to cleanse Orestes and Pylades. The
mention of lambs is rather striking, as normally pigs are used,45 even though we
have only representations of mythological sacrifices in this manner.46 Perhaps
Euripides wanted to introduce a slightly different element in order to show up the
strangeness of the country. As the Persian magi whispered their chants in a very
low voice,47 this custom may well be alluded to here in order to conjure up a
strange ritual. In any case, it is rather striking that the last part of the play contains
a number of references to Aeschylus’ Persians,48 just as Thoas’ threat of impaling
Orestes and Pylades when they are caught (1430) suggests a Persian custom.49

40. PARKER, o.c. (n. 22), p. 316-317 (sun), 371 (veiling).

41. PARKER, o.c. (n. 22), p. 227-228.
42. PARKER, o.c. (n. 22), p. 371-373; add now Euripides, fr. 71 Kannicht.
43. For the term see J. DIGGLE, Euripidea, Oxford, 1994, p. 478-479.
44. L. DEUBNER, Kleine Schriften zur klassischen Altertumskunde, Königstein/Ts, 1982, p. 607-634
[1941]; L. GERNET, Les Grecs sans miracle, Paris, 1983, p. 247-257 [1932]; J. RUDHARDT, Notions
fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la Grèce classique, Paris,
19922 [Geneva, 1958], p. 178-180; E. CALDERÓN, “A propósito de ὀλολυγών (Arato, Phaen.
948),” QUCC 67 (2001), p. 133-139.
45. PARKER, o.c. (n. 22), p. 271-273.
46. F.T. VAN STRATEN, Hierà Kalá. Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece,
Leiden, 1995, p. 4-5.
47. BREMMER, o.c. (n. 6), p. 246.
48. KYRIAKOU, o.c. (n. 1) on 1422-30 compares allusions to Aeschylus’ Persians, 1379-1380,
1385b-1391a, 1395b-1397a, 1437.
49. E. HALL, Inventing the Barbarian, Oxford, 1989, p. 158-159; R. ROLLINGER, “Herodotus,
Human Violence and the Ancient Near East,” in V. KARAGEORGHIS, I. TAIFACOS (eds.), The
 HUMAIN SACRIFICE IN EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS 97

Having realised that they are deceived, King Thoas mobilises a pursuit of
Orestes’ penteconter (1347), a size probably chosen by Euripides in imitation of the
Argo, the only other ship that had managed to sail through the Symplegades.50 At
this critical moment the Goddess Athena appears and stops the posse. There is
something strange about her appearance, as we would have expected Artemis to
make some sort of intervention. But the whole business of human sacrifice is
dropped, and Athena rather abruptly now explains the purpose of the theft of the
statue. Orestes has to build a new temple for the statue at Halai, ‘a place near the
borders of Attica’, where the people will worship Artemis Tauropolos (1450-1457).
When the people celebrate a heortê, a ‘festival’, a term that suggests a happy ritual,51
‘to atone for your (i.e. that of Orestes) sacrifice (sphagê) let them hold a sword to
the neck of a man and draw blood so that piety will be satisfied and the goddess
receives honours’ (1458-1461).
The last scene clearly refers to a local ritual that perhaps no longer was
understood and in this way may have received a new interpretation. The
connection with Tauris strongly suggests that the local image also looked like an
archaic or exotic image of Artemis, just like the other images that were connected
with the myth of Orestes.52 In fact, we know that the temple in Halai contained an
adyton, a kind of ‘holy of holiest’, which served to shield the dangerous image of
the goddess from the worshippers. This was typical for temples of Artemis, and
archaeology thus confirms the threatening nature of her images.53 The connection
with Artemis Tauropolos fits the human sacrifice equally well. She was the goddess
of the Macedonian army, and her name must mean ‘bull-herd’. As Ionian youths in
the service of Poseidon were called ‘bulls’ and Cypriot bull-masked priests are
attested in a cult of Zeus Xenios, to whom strangers were sacrificed, Fritz Graf has

World of Herodotus, Nicosia, 2004, p. 121-150 and “Extreme Gewalt und Strafgericht. Ktesias
und Herodot als Zeugnisse für den Achaimenidenhof,” in B. JACOBS, R. ROLLINGER (eds.), Der
Achämenidenhof, Wiesbaden, 2010, p. 559-666.
50. J.N. BREMMER, “Oorsprong, functie en verval van de pentekonter,” Utrechtse Historische
Cahiers 11 (1990), p. 1-11 [Origin, function and decline of the penteconter].
51. J. MIKALSON, “The Heorte of Heortology,” GRBS 23 (1982), p. 213-221.
52. For images of Artemis connected with Orestes see the authoritative study of F. GRAF, “Das
Götterbild aus dem Taurerland,” AW 10.4 (1979), p. 33-41; W.K. PRITCHETT, Pausanias
Periegetes, Amsterdam, 1998, p. 256-260; P.G. BILDE, “Wandering Images: From Taurian (and
Chersonesean) Parthenos to (Artemis) Tauropolos and (Artemis) Persike,” in EAD. et al.
(eds.), The Cauldron of Ariantas, Aarhus, 2003, p. 164-183; B. BURRELL, “Iphigeneia in
Philadelphia,” ClAnt 24 (2005), p. 223-256.
53. J. TRAVLOS, “Treis naoi tes Artemidos Aulidas tauropolou kai Vrauronias,” in U. JANTZEN
(ed.), Neue Forschungen in griechischen Heiligtümern, Tübingen, 1976, p. 197-205; COLE, o.c.
(n. 3), p. 198-201 (with many examples); K. KALOGEROPOULOS, “Die Entwicklung des
attischen Artemis- Kultes anhand der Funde des Heiligtums der Artemis Tauropolos in Halai
Araphenides (Loutsa),” in H. LOHMANN, T. MATTERN (eds.), Attika – Archäologie einer zentralen
Kulturlandschaft, Wiesbaden, 2010, p. 167-82.
98 JAN N. BREMMER

persuasively suggested that we are looking here at a background of initiation that

went back to Mycenaean times;54 the myth of Theseus’ fight against the Minotaur,
‘bull of Minos’ somehow also belongs to this archaic tradition.55 And just as
Theseus’ fight against the Minotaur meant the end of his adolescence, so Orestes’
visit to Tauris was the necessary prelude for his return to ordered society. After this
aetiology Athena concludes with the institution of the cult of Iphigeneia in
Brauron. As this cult is clearly connected with the rites of maturation of girls, both
cults, which were only 6 kilometres away from one another, were already associated
in antiquity and probably related in their attention to the growing up of boys and
girls.56
With these aetiologies we have arrived at the end of the play. Let us conclude
with looking now once again at the problem of human sacrifice in the play. It is
clear that the myth of Orestes and Iphigeneia in Tauris is relatively young and
presupposes Greek colonisation.57 Herodotus (IV, 103) mentions that it was the
custom of the Taurians to sacrifice shipwrecked sailors and captured Greeks to a
goddess called Parthenos. After the initial ritual (katarxamenoi: see above) they
clubbed the heads of their prisoners and pushed their bodies over the edge of the
cliff on which their temple stood, although others said that they were buried. The
heads were fixed on stakes. The Taurians, thus still Herodotus, identified their
Parthenos with Iphigeneia. Strabo (VII, 4, 2) adds that the temple contains a
xoanon. The historical reality behind this report is of course hard to establish, but
the Parthenos was worshipped there in later times, and the practice of headhunting
is well established for the Scythians.58
It is not difficult to see that Euripides closely used this passage, as all ele-
ments in some way return in his play. Artemis was a parthenos, ‘virgin’, and on
Paros even worshipped as Artemis Parthenos (SEG 39.863). The pushing over the
cliff is mentioned as a threat by Thoas (1430), and the heads on stakes return in
the play as trophies on the temple (above). Iphigeneia is not the goddess but still
the priestess of the goddess Artemis, whose statue is also called a xoanon in the

54. GRAF, o.c. (n. 2), p. 413-417.

55. J.N. BREMMER, Greek Religion, Oxford, 19992 [1994], p. 62.
56. For the connection see GRAF, o.c. (n. 2), p. 414; BONNECHERE, o.c. (n. 14), p. 48-52; PARKER,
o.c. (n. 17), 241-242.
57. For a full discussion of the connections of Iphigeneia with the Black Sea area, see A.I. IVANTCHIK,
Am Vorabend der Kolonisation, Berlin-Moscow, 2005, p. 85-98.
58. Parthenos: D. ASHERI et al., A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV, Oxford, 2007, p. 654-655.
D. BRAUND, “Parthenos and the Nymphs at Crimean Chersonesos: Colonial Appropriation and
Native Integration,” in A. BRESSON et al. (eds.), Une Koinè pontique. Cités grecques, sociétés
indigènes et empires mondiaux sur le littoral nord de la Mer Noire (VIIe s. a.C. – IIIe s. p.C.),
Bordeaux, 2007, p. 191-200; M. DANA, “Cultes locaux et identité grecque dans les cités du Pont-
Euxin,” LEC 75 (2007), p. 171-186. Headhunting: P. RIEDLBERGER, “Skalpieren bei den Skythen.
Zu Herodot IV 64,” Klio 78 (1996), p. 53-60; ASHERI, o.c. (above), p. 628-629 (on IV, 64).
 HUMAIN SACRIFICE IN EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS 99

play (1359). Even the mention of the initial ceremonies is used by Euripides, who
often refers to them as we have seen. However, he evidently did not want to
represent the disposal of Orestes in an all too dishonouring manner and therefore
mentioned cremation as the mode of funeral.
On the other hand, Euripides did not receive any support from Herodotus
for a representation or interpretation of Artemis. That makes his contribution the
more interesting. The epithet Tauropolos of Artemis must have made it easy to
connect her cult in Halai with that in Tauris. Thus we hardly find anything really
strange or barbaric in Artemis in Tauris. Athena calls Artemis her sister (1489),
Orestes refers to the goddess as ‘Apollo’s sister’ (86), and Iphigeneia calls her
‘daughter of Leto’ (386, 1398). As in Greece, she has altars (94), and her temple
receives typically Greek names of anaktora ([41], 66, 636), dômata (724, 1153,
1222) and melathra (69, 1216, 1257, 1287). It is only the custom of beheading,
which does not belong to her Greek cult.
But what about the human sacrifice? Was it seen positive or negative? There
clearly is a difference in the play between Iphigeneia’s own sacrifice and that of
Orestes. Although not described in so many respects as in IA, it seems clear that
Iphigeneia is represented as being slaughtered like an animal. The only difference
between her’s and a normative Greek sacrifice is that she is killed with a sword and
of course not eaten. But otherwise there is not even a hint that this is a strange or
uncommon sacrifice. It is different with Orestes. Although the initial ceremonies
resemble those of animal sacrifice, the last part of the sacrifice is rather different.
We do not hear of many details, but the killing by people who are not clearly
described, the burning in the temple and the hanging up of the skull on the
cornices of the temple hardly fit a normal Greek sacrifice and suggest a barbaric
ritual. Yet Thoas is an interesting mix of an oriental despot with cruel penalties and
a pious Greek who obediently listens to the goddess Athena. Euripides clearly
refrains from creating all too simplistic characters and rituals in this play.
When reflecting on her own fate, as we have seen, Iphigeneia is extremely
bitter. At first, in the prologue, Iphigeneia is rather reticent in her criticism. She
mentions that Artemis takes delight in the Taurian customs (35), but adds that she
will not comment on the unpleasant aspects of the festival ‘for fear of the goddess’
(37). The herdsman announcing the capture of Orestes and Pylades has no such
qualms and calls them ‘a welcome sacrifice and offering to the goddess Artemis’
(243-244). But after hearing of the capture, Iphigeneia is reminded again of her
own sacrifice and this makes her much more outspoken: ‘I do not approve of the
cleverness of the goddess. Any mortal who has had contact with blood or childbirth
or a corpse she keeps from the altars, deeming him unclean. Yet she herself takes
pleasure in human sacrifice!’ (380-4); the last line is echoed in one of the last lines
of the (probably) original end of the Iphigeneia in Aulis where the goddess is
invoked as ‘o lady, lady, who delights in human sacrifices’ (1524-1525). But it
looks as if she shrinks back from her own boldness in criticizing the goddess and
100 JAN N. BREMMER

therefore adds: ‘Now just as I find it incredible that the gods at Tantalus’ feast
enjoyed the flesh of his son, so I believe that people here, themselves murderous,
ascribe their own fault to the goddess. None of the gods, I think, is wicked’ (386-
391).
Yet immediately afterwards, as if in response to Iphigeneia’s outburst, the
chorus sings of ‘the unwelcome land where for the maiden goddess the altars and
colonnaded temples are drenched in human blood’ (405-406). However, the
chorus leader concludes the first stasimon with announcing the arrival of ‘a new
sacrifice (prosphagma) for the goddess’ (458) existing in the ‘finest offering from
the Greeks’ (459), and comments: ‘O Lady, if what the city does pleases you,
receive the sacrifices (thysias) which the law in our country declares to be unholy’
(463-466). But when Iphigeneia comes with a plan to save at least one of the two
friends, she mentions a Greek who thought of his sacrifice ‘that he died because
of the law, thinking these rites of the goddess being legitimate’ (586-587). Finally,
Athena seems to recognise the right of her sister on human victims, as she says
that the people in Halai have to enact a pseudo human sacrifice in recompense
(apoina) for the slaughter of Orestes that had not taken place (1459).
There is a polyphony in these passages that can be difficult overheard and
which is strengthened by the very figure of Iphigeneia, who herself has been
sacrificed by the Greeks but now helps to abolish the Taurian practice of human
sacrifice.59 Orestes, too, although nearly being sacrificed, transfers the image of
Artemis from a barbaric cult and country to the ordered world of Athens (1448).60
In the end, Euripides leaves us with the clear impression that the Taurian sacrifice
is unholy, but Artemis still a respectable goddess. It is a balancing act which is
perhaps less persuasive for us than it was for the ancient Greeks.61

59. C. SOURVINOU-INWOOD, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Lanham-…, 2003, p. 35.

60. See also the excellent observations of CROPP, o.c. (n. 1), p. 39-41.
61. I am most grateful to audiences in Montreal (2008), New York (2009) and Cologne (2011) as
well as to Pierre Bonnechere and Martin Cropp for their comments.
 Liste des illustrations / List of figures

(P. Bonnechere)
Pl. I Attic red-figure hydria, face A. London, British Museum, E 169 (Photo
Museum).

(J. Mylonopoulos)
Pl. IIa Apulian volute krater by the Dareios painter. Naples, Museo Archeologico
Nazionale H 3254 (reproduced with the permission of the Soprintendenza
Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei).
Pl. IIb White-ground lekythos from Selinus by Douris. Palermo, Museo Archeologico
Regionale NI 1886 (drawing by SeunJung Kim).
Pl. IIIa Attic red-figure oinochoe by the Shuvalov painter. Kiel, Antikensammlung –
Kunsthalle B 538 (Photo Museum).
Pl. IIIb Apulian volute krater by the Ilioupersis painter. London, British Museum F
159 (Photo Museum).
Pl. IVa Apulian volute krater by the Dareios painter. Berlin, Staatliche Museen 1984.41
(Photo bpk, Antikensammlung, SMB, Johannes Laurentius).
Pl. IVb Protoattic krater. Anonymous loan. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 6.67
(drawing by SeungJung Kim).
Pl. V Tyrrhenian amphora by the Timiades painter. London, British Museum
1897.0727.2 (Photo Museum).
Pl. VIa-b So-called Polyxena sarcophagus. Çanakkale, Archaeological Museum. Principal
long side (drawing and photo from Studia Troica 6, p. 256-257 fig. 9-10b, re-
produced with the permission of the Troia Project, University of Tübingen).
Pl. VIIa-b Attic black-figure hydria attributed to a painter of the Leagros group. Berlin,
Staatliche Museen F 1902 (Photo Museum).
Pl. VIIIa Attic red-figure kylix by Makron, face A. Paris, Louvre, G 153 (Photo Réunion
des musées nationaux, Paris).
Pl. VIIIb Apulian volute krater. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 3296 (Photo
Museum).
Pl. IXa-b Attic red-figure kylix by Douris (face A and B). Fort Worth, Kimbell Art
Museum (Photo Museum / Art Resource, NY).
248 LISTE DES ILLUSTRATIONS / LIST OF FIGURES

(L.I. Paradis)
Pl. Xa Tzompantli exposant les crânes de captifs. Codex Durán, fol. 3a (dessin d’après
Codice Duran, E. & T. Gutierrez [éds], Mexico, Arrendadora Internacional, Me-
xico, 1990).
Pl. Xb La pierre du soleil (aztèque). Mexico, Musée National d’Anthropologie (Photo
du musée / Art Resource, NY).
Pl. XIa La divinité Coatlicue, « Jupe de serpent ». Mexico, Musée National
d’Anthropologie (Photo L.I. Paradis).
Pl. XIb Sacrifié humain, céramique grandeur nature. Mexico, Museo del Templo Mayor
(Photo du musée / Art Resource, NY).
Pl. XII Les 20 noms de jour du Tonalpohualli : tecpatl, couteau sacrificiel et miquiztli,
mort (symboles sacrificiels). Codex aztèque « Borbonicus », fol. 3 (Paris, Biblio-
thèque de l’Assemblée nationale © Foundation for the Advancement of
Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org).
Pl. XIIIa Voyage de Vénus dans les enfers : la Maison des couteaux d’obsidienne, divers
symboles associés à la mort et au sacrifice (pas un sacrifice proprement dit),
Tezcatlipoca en noir avec deux couteaux sacrificiels à la place de la tête. Codex
aztèque « Borgia », fol. 32 (Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek © Foundation for
the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org).
Pl. XIIIb Le ciel nocturne, Tlayohualli. Codex aztèque « Borgia », fol. 18 (Rostock,
Universitätsbibliothek © Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican
Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org).
Pl. XIV Les quatre directions et le Centre. Codex aztèque « Fejérváry-Mayer », fol. 1
(Museum of the City of Liverpool © Foundation for the Advancement of Meso-
american Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org).
Pl. XVa Fête de Tlacaxipehualiztli : « L’écorchement des hommes ». B. Sahagún, Primeros
Memoriales, fol. 250 r (centre) (dessin d’après T.D. SULLIVAN, Primeros Memo-
riales (Facsimile): Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation, Norman,
1997).
Pl. XVb Enceinte cérémonielle de Tenochtitlan. B. Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, fol.
269 r (Madrid, Palacio Real. Photo du musée / Art Resource, NY).
Pl. XIV Sacrifice humain au cours de la fête de Toxcatl. B. Sahagún, Primeros
Memoriales, Codex Florentino (facsimile), Livre 2, fol. 30 (Mexico, Templo Ma-
yor Library/ Art Resource, NY).
Pl. XVII Le prêtre arrache le cœur de la victime sacrificielle pour l’offrir au soleil.
B. Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, Codex Florentino (facsimile), Livre 2, Annexe,
fol.122 (Mexico, Templo Mayor Library / Art Resource, NY).
 Planche I
Planche II

b
 Planche III

b
Planche IV

b
 Planche V
Planche VI

b
 Planche VII

b
Planche VIII

b
 Planche IX