Tauris

Iphigeneia in Tauris
Orestes and Pylades brought before Iphigenia, by Joseph Strutt
Written by	Euripides
Chorus	Greek Slave Women
Characters	Iphigeneia Orestes Pylades King Thoas Athena herdsman servant
Place premiered	Athens
Original language	Ancient Greek
Genre	Tragedy
Setting	Taurica, a region of Scythia in the northern Black Sea

Iphigenia in Tauris (Ancient Greek: Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις, Iphigeneia en Taurois) is a drama by the playwright Euripides, written between 414 BC and 412 BC. It has much in common with another of Euripides's plays, Helen, as well as the lost play Andromeda, and is often described as a romance, a melodrama, a tragi-comedy or an escape play.

Although the play is generally known in English as Iphigenia in Tauris, this is, strictly speaking, the Latin title of the play (corresponding to the Greek Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις), the meaning of which is Iphigenia among the Taurians. There is no such place as Tauris in Euripides' play, although Goethe, in his play Iphigenie auf Tauris (on which Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride is based), took there to be such a place.

Years before the time period covered by the play, the young princess Iphigeneia narrowly avoided death by sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. (See plot of Iphigeneia at Aulis.) At the last moment the goddess Artemis, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, intervened and replaced Iphigeneia on the altar with a deer, saving the girl and sweeping her off to the land of the Taurians. She has since been made a priestess at the temple of Artemis in Tauris, a position in which she has the gruesome task of ritually sacrificing foreigners who land on King Thoas's shores.