Literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages - Summary - 2019
Iphigenia in Aulida
Euripides (485 (or 480) - 406 BC e)
The Trojan War began. The Trojan prince, Paris, seduced and kidnapped Elena, the wife of the Spartan king, Menelaus. The Greeks assembled on them a huge army, at the head of him stood the king of Argos Agamemnon, the brother of Menelausa and the husband of Klytemnestra, the sisters of Elena. The troops stood in Aulida, on the Greek coast facing the Three. But it could not go away - the goddess of these places, Artemis, the hunter and patroness of the pregnant women, sent winds to the Greeks or even nasty winds.
Why did Artemis do it - they talked differently. Maybe she just wanted to protect Troy, which was protected by her brother Apollo. Maybe Agamemnon, having fun in his leisure time, was struck by a jar with a rod and proudly exclaimed that Artemis himself would not hit the mark - and that was an insult to the goddess. Or maybe a banner happened: two eagles grabbed and tore a pregnant bunny, and the gendarme said: it means - two troops will take Troy full of treasures, but they will not pass Artemis's anger, patrons of pregnant women and women of childbearing age. Artemis needs to be commended.
How to calm Artemis - there was only one story about this. The adverb said: the goddess requires a human sacrifice - let his daughter Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, the beautiful Iphigenia, be slaughtered on the altar. Human sacrifices in Greece have long been out of place; and such a sacrifice, so that his father sacrificed his daughter, was an entirely unheard of affair. And yet sacrificed brought. For Iphigenia, the trainers were sent: let her be brought to the Greek state, King Agamemnon wants to marry her for the best Greek hero - Achilles. Iphigenia was brought, but instead of the wedding she was waiting for death: she was tied up, her mouth was tied, her cries were not interrupted by the rite, carried to the altar, the priest carried a knife over her ... But here the goddess Artemis was merciful: she wrapped the altar with a cloud, threw it under the knife the priest instead of the girl sacrificed deer, and Iphigenia carried away by air to the edge of the earth, to Taurida, and made her priestess there. Evrypid wrote another tragedy about the fate of Iphigenia in Taurida. But none of the Greeks could guess what was happening: everyone was sure that Iphigenia fell on the altar. And the mother of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, concealed mortal hatred for Agamemnon, her husband-infanticide. How many terrible affairs followed this, will show then Aeschylus in his Oreste.
This is about the sacrifice of Iphigenia and wrote his tragedy Euripides. There are three heroes in it: first Agamemnon, then Clitemnestra, and finally Iphigenia itself.
An action begins with the conversation of Agamemnon with his faithful old slave. Night, silence, windlessness, but in the heart of Agamemnon there is no rest. Good servant: his case is obedience; It's hard for the king: his business is a decision. In it, the duty of the leader is fighting: to lead the army to victory - and the feeling of the father: to save his daughter. First, the duty of the leader overpowered: he sent to Argos an order to bring Iphigenia to Avila - as if for a wedding with Achilles. Now he overpowered his father's feeling: here's the letter with the cancellation of this order, let the old man bring him to Arthos to Clitemnestra as soon as possible, and if the mother and daughter had already left, let them stop them on the road and return them. The old man goes away, Agamemnon - in his tent; the sun rises There is a chorus of local women: they certainly do not know anything and in a long song sincerely glorify the great conceived campaign, listing the leader for the leader and the ship by the ship.
The song of the choir breaks with unexpected noise. The old rabble has left a distance: when he left the camp, he was met by the one to whom this war is most needed and most expensive, - the king of Menelaus; Without thinking twice, he took away the secret letter, read it and now Agamemnon plunges with reproaches: how did he change himself and the army, he brings a common cause in favor of his family affairs - wants to save his daughter? Agamemnon flares up: did not Menelaus do all this work together in order to please his own family affairs - to return his wife? "The Widowman! - shouts Menelaus, - you managed the command and take too much to yourself! "" Mad! " - shouts Agamemnon, "I take a lot of myself, but I will not take a sin to my soul!" And here - a new frightening message: while the brothers argued, an unannounced Klytymnestra with Ifigenia had already approached the camp, the army already knows about it and noisy about Tsarevnina the wedding Agamemnon is dying: he sees that one against all he can not stand. And Menelaus gets mad: he understands that the ultimate culprit for the death of Iphigenia is he. The choir sings the song with a love of good and evil: the love of Helen, which caused this war, was evil.
Clitemnestra and Iphigenia enter the chariot; why is Agamemnon so sad to meet them? "Tsar care!" Exactly Does LI Iphigenia expect a wedding? "Yes, they will lead her to the altar." And where is the wedding sacrifice to the gods? "I'm preparing it". Agamemnon persuades Clitemnestre to leave her daughter and return to Argos. "No, never: I am, and at the wedding I'm a mistress." Klytemnestra enters the tent, Agamemnon goes to the camp; The choir, realizing that sacrifices and wars are not to be avoided, drowns sorrow for the song about the coming fall of Troy.
After all, one more action participant has been forgotten - Achilles. His name was used for deception, not telling him. Now he is in no way approached the tent of Agamemnon: long wait for a campaign, the soldiers grieve! Clitemnestra comes to meet him and welcomes him as the future son-in-law. Achilles are perplexed, Klytemnestra is also; Is there a deception here? And the elder slave reveals to them a deception: the intention against Iphigenia, and the torment of Agamemnon, and his intercepted letter. Clytemnestra is desperate: she and her daughter are in the trap, the whole army will be against them, one hope - for Achilles, because he is deceived just like they are! "Yes," Achilles replies, "I will not tolerate the king playing my name like a robber with an ax; I am a warrior, I obey the boss for the good of the cause, but I refuse obedience in the name of evil; who will touch Iphigenia, will deal with me! "The choir sings a song in honor of Achilles,
Achilles went to his warriors; Agamemnon returns instead: "The altar is ready, it's time to sacrifice" - and sees that his wife and daughter already know everything. "Do you sacrifice a daughter? - asks Clytemnestra. - Will you pray for a happy journey? and happy return? to me, to whom do you take an innocent daughter for a fellow woman Elena? to her sisters and brother, who will be shy from your bloody hands? And do not you even fear the right revenge? "-" Pity, father, "Iphigenia admonishes," to live so joyfully, and to die so scary! "-" What is terrible and not terrible, I know myself, "answers Agamemnon," but here in the weapon is the whole of Greece, so that foreigners do not disgrace her wives, and for her I do not regret my blood or yours. " He turns and leaves; Iphigenia mournful song mourns his fate, but the words of his father burned into her soul.
Achilles returns: the warriors already know everything, the whole camp is boiling and demands the prince's sacrifice, but he, Achilles, will defend her at least one against all. "No need! - Iphigenia suddenly straightens up. - Do not expose the sword to friend friend - save them against foreigners. If we are talking about the fate and honor of the whole of Greece - let me be her savior! Truth is stronger than death - I will die for the truth; and the husbands and wives of Greece will honor me. " Achilles in admiration, Clytemnestra in despair, Iphigenia singing a laughing song to the glory of the bloodthirsty Artemis and under these sounds goes to death.
Here the tragedy of Euripides is broken off. Further, an ending was followed: Artemis appeared at the top and announced to the afflicted Clitemnestre that her daughter would be saved, and the ham would die under the knife. Then the messenger came and told Clitemnestra what he saw when the sacrifice was performed: the rank of the rite, the agamemnon agony, the last words of Iphigenia, the priest's blow, the cloud over the altar, and the wind blowing the sails of the Greek ships at last. But this ending was preserved only in the late redefinition; How did Clitemnestre respond to this, as the fateful thought of her husband's vengeance originated in her heart, we do not know.