Iphigenia in Aulis

(The Greek myth & Euripides' adaptation)

Iphigenia:  A young girl who was sacrificed to win the Trojan War.

Agamemnon:   Iphigenia's father.  Leader of the Greek forces during the Trojan War. 

Clytemnestra:  Iphigenia's mother, who eventually takes a lover and kills her husband.

Orestes:  Iphigenia's brother, who seeks revenge for his father's murder. 

Achilles:  A Greek warrior who is used to lure Iphigenia to Aulis.

While in Aulis, Agamemnon killed a stag in a grove sacred to Diana.  Angered, Diana stopped the winds so that the Greek fleet could not sail to Troy. The seer Calchas announced that the only way the Greek fleet would sail was if Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia, was sacrificed.  

Iphigenia was sent to Aulis under the pretext that she was to marry the great warrior Achilles, but quickly learned that there would be no marriage and that she would be sacrificed for the war.  Achilles, whose name was used without permission, commits to protecting Iphigenia, but in the end she is sacrificed for the war.

In Euripides' play, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia voluntarily agrees to sacrifice herself. She does this for she "imagines that she will win the fame for heroism denied to women".  Some write that Iphigenia was not killed, but that a great fog fell over the place of sacrifice and that Iphigenia was spirited away to become a priestess of Diana. 

Either way, Iphigenia remains a tragic heroine of Greek literature.