Iphigenia in Aulis

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Iphigenia in Aulis ( Greek  Ἰφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Αὐλίδι / Iphigéneia hē en Aulídi) is a tragedy by the Greek tragedian Euripides , which occurred between 408 BC. BC and 406 BC BC originated. After the poet's death, it was given to Dionysia in 405 BC by his son, Euripides the Younger . Listed together with the Bacchae and Alkmaion in Corinth . The central character of the plot is Iphigenia , the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestras .

action

The Greek army moves to Troy under Agamemnon's leadership to fight in the Trojan War and lands on the way in the port city of Aulis in Boeotia . There the goddess Artemis causes a persistent calm and makes it impossible to continue the journey. As the seer Kalchas prophesies, the goddess will only lift the calm when the Greeks have sacrificed Iphigenia. Therefore the general Agamemnon is forced by divine will to sacrifice his daughter if he wants to reach Troy with his army.

Iphigenia is already on the way to Aulis, where she is supposed to become engaged to the hero Achilles . Her father Agamemnon tries to warn her with a letter, but his brother Menelaus intercepts the letter and confronts Agamemnon. In an argument with his brother Menelaus is about to give in when a messenger reports that Iphigenia will appear with her mother Clytaimnestra and her brother Orestes . Menelaus is gripped by pity and wants to prevent the sacrifice, but Agamemnon decides to carry out the sacrifice and to keep it a secret from Clytaimnestra.

When Iphigenia, Orestes and Clytaimnestra arrive in Aulis, Agamemnon greets them warmly. Iphigenia is very happy to see her father again. In the next scene, Clytaimnestra is alone with Achilles and explains to him that Agamemnon had involved him in an intrigue: the alleged engagement, of which Achilles only found out at the time, is only a pretext to take Iphigenia to Aulis; Clytaimnestra learned this from an old servant. Achilles is determined to save Iphigenia. In the following the conflict between Achilles, Agamemnon and Iphigenia comes to a head. Agamemnon is determined to sacrifice his daughter for Greece; Achilles wants to prevent the sacrifice; Iphigenia finally declares that she is ready to die for Greece. It is then adorned and consecrated as a sacrifice.

At the end of the piece is a messenger report stating the that Iphigenia was saved by Artemis: The goddess has a dea ex machina Iphigenia to the gods caught up in its place a deer was sacrificed.

reception

The Iphigenia tragedy in Aulis had a great impact on literature and other arts. The Roman dramatists Gnaeus Naevius and Quintus Ennius took up the subject in their own tragedies as early as antiquity, which have only survived in fragments. Since the Renaissance there have been many translations, adaptations and dramatic adaptations of the piece. In addition to the Euripidean original, Jean Racine's tragedy Iphigénie (1674) formed the source for numerous operas that were written from the 18th century, including Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide (Paris 1774) and Martín y Soler's Ifigenia in Aulide (Naples 1779). Dramatic adaptations were published by Konrad Levezow (1804) and Gerhart Hauptmann (1943) ( Iphigenie in Aulis ) , among others . Director Michael Cacoyannis presented the film Iphigenia in 1977 based on the tragedy . With the title of his film The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Giorgos Lanthimos alludes to tragedy and at the same time gives a key to a possible interpretation of this work about guilt, doom and atonement.

literature

Text output

  • The Iphigeneia at Aulis of Euripides . Edited with Introduction and Critical and Explanatory Notes by EB England. London 1891.
  • Euripides, Iphigenia aulidensis. Edidit Hans-Christian Günther . Leipzig 1988 ( Bibliotheca Teubneriana ).
  • Walter Stockert : Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis . 2 volumes, Vienna 1992.

Translations

  • Friedrich Schiller : Iphigenia in Aulis. Cologne 1790 (originally published in Thalia 2,6–7, 1788).
  • Gustav Ludwig: Iphigenia in Aulis. In: Euripides works, translated metrically and accompanied by notes. 2nd volume, Stuttgart 1837 ( Greek poets in new metrical translations 12).
  • Johann Jakob Christian Donner : Iphigenia in Aulis. In: Euripides. Second volume, Heidelberg 1845, pp. 1–73.
  • Johann Adam Hartung : Iphigenia in Aulis. In: Euripides' works. Greek with metric translation and examining and explanatory notes. 14th ribbon, Leipzig 1852.
  • Ernst Buschor : Euripides, Orestes. Iphigenia in Aulis. The maenads. Transferred and explained. Munich 1960.
  • Horst-Dieter Blume : Euripides: Iphigenia in Aulis. Translation, Notes and Afterword. Stuttgart 2014.

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Neitzel : Prologue and play in the Euripideische Iphigenie in Aulis. In: Philologus. 131, pp. 185-223 (1987).
  • Susanne Aretz: The sacrifice of Iphigeneia in Aulis. The reception of myth in ancient and modern dramas . Stuttgart 1999 ( contributions to archeology 131)
  • Rainer Nickel : Lexicon of ancient literature. Düsseldorf / Zurich 1999, p. 479.

Web links

Wikisource: Iphigenie in Aulis in the Schiller translation  - sources and full texts