Sacrificial lamb or «destroyer of cities»? Character-building in “Iphigenia at Aulis”

Abstract

The intertextual relationship between Iphigenia at Aulis and Agamemnon illustrates Euripides’ dramatic strategy: namely, the transformation of the protagonist from an innocent victim into a voluntary martyr of the war against the barbarians. The Aeschylean echoes are associated with significant antitheses, and the most surprising of all is the ambivalent adjective heleptolis: first coined by Aeschylus to discredit Helen, it is reused here in the triumphant context of self-celebration within the antiphonal song in honour of Artemis which is sung by Iphigenia and Chorus (1476, 1511). This paper attempts to show that the Aeschylus’ passage (Ag. 687-690) helps to understand the metamorphosis of Iphigenia: the language which should celebrate Iphigenia is the same as the one used to highlight the evil that Helen will do to Greeks and Trojans, and therefore unmasks the illusion of a bellum iustum.