Iphigenia in Tauris (Goethe)

Iphigenia in Tauris
Scene from Iphigenia in Tauris (1802 version première in Weimar), with Goethe as Orestes in the centre (Act III, Scene 3). Drawing by Angelica Kauffman.
Written by	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Characters	Iphigenia Thoas, king of the Tauri Orestes Pylades Arkas
Date premiered	April 6, 1779 (1779-04-06)
Place premiered	Ducal private theater in Weimar
Original language	German, based on Greek version by Euripides
Genre	Tragedy
Setting	Diana's temple grove at Tauris, after Trojan War

Iphigenia in Tauris (German: Iphigenie auf Tauris) is a reworking by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of the ancient Greek tragedy Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις (Iphigeneia en Taurois) by Euripides. Euripides' title means "Iphigenia among the Taurians", whereas Goethe's title means "Iphigenia in Taurica", the country of the Tauri.

Goethe wrote the first version of his play in six weeks, and it was first performed on April 6, 1779, in prose form. He rewrote it in 1781, again in prose, and finally in 1786 in verse form. He took the manuscript of Iphigenia in Tauris with him on his famous Italian Journey.

Beloved by the gods for his wisdom, the demigod Tantalus was once invited to their fellowship. Becoming boisterous whilst celebrating with them, he began to boast, and he stole the gods' nectar and ambrosia, their food of immortality. When the gods came to see Tantalus in turn, he tested their omniscience by offering his own son Pelops to them as their meal. Offended by the deception, the gods banished Tantalus from their community to Tartarus and cursed him and his family, the House of Atreus. This became known as the curse on the Tantalids, in which descendants from Tantalus in every subsequent generation were driven by revenge and hatred to the killing of their own family members.

Thus did Agamemnon, army commander and great-grandson of Tantalus, offer his eldest daughter Iphigenia to goddess Diana (in Greek known as Artemis) to ensure favourable winds for the voyage from Aulis, modern Avlida, to Troy, where he intended to wage war against Troy. In the mistaken belief that her husband Agamemnon had murdered their daughter Iphigenia, Clytemnestra then killed Agamemnon. As a result, Orestes and Electra, the brother and sister of Iphigenia, harboured a grudge against the mother over the murder of their father, and Orestes, with the help of Electra, murdered his mother Clytemnestra. Being now guilty of a murder, he too fell under the family curse. In an attempt to flee his impending fate of falling victim to revenge and of being killed for his crime, he fled. Consulting the Delphic oracle of Apollo, he was told to bring "the sister" to Athens and that this would be the only way to lift the curse. Since he supposed his sister Iphigenia was already dead, Orestes assumed that the oracle must have meant Apollo's twin sister, the goddess Diana. He therefore planned to rob the statue of Diana from the temple in Tauris, and he set out with his old friend Pylades for the coast of Tauris.