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As a matter of fact, in one play which he often quotes, the Iphigenia Taurica, the plot is actually distorted at the very end in order to give an opportunity for the epiphany. See my Euripides and his Age, pp. 221-45.
At any rate, Erasmus owns that Grocyn's sardonic comment, "It is the way with you scholars," stuck in his mind even when he returned to Paris, and made him forward to the Archbishop a perfectly new translation of the 'Iphigenia.
Lastly, the shade of the murdered Clytemnestra passes before him, and he awakes with a shriek to find his cell empty save for the mournful form of Iphigenia, who has come to question the stranger as to his origin and the purpose of his visit to Tauris.
The two friends were seized and carried bound to the temple to be made victims. But the priestess of Diana was no other than Iphigenia, the sister of Orestes, who, our readers will remember, was snatched away by Diana, at the moment when she was about to be sacrificed.
The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's knees, imploring him to save her: "Tears will I bring my only cunning all I have! Round your knees, my father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before my time! Sweet, sweet is the light! drive me not down into the halls of death.
The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles; but no mention is made of Apollo's arrows, or of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or of the ridiculous combats of the gods. The date of the inventions of Triptolemy and Ceres is found there; but Ceres is not called goddess.
Next after these are Discoveries made directly by the poet; which are inartistic for that very reason; e.g. Orestes' Discovery of himself in Iphigenia: whereas his sister reveals who she is by the letter, Orestes is made to say himself what the poet rather than the story demands.
Is there any danger of one or the other growing tired of the intimacy, and becoming willing to get rid of it, like a garment which has shrunk and grown too tight? Is it likely that some other attraction may come into disturb the existing relation? The problem is to my mind not only interesting, but exceptionally curious. You remember the story of Cymon and Iphigenia as Dryden tells it.
The following will show how the universal element in Iphigenia, for instance, may be viewed: A certain maiden having been offered in sacrifice, and spirited away from her sacrificers into another land, where the custom was to sacrifice all strangers to the Goddess, she was made there the priestess of this rite.
But Abraham would never have thought of slaying his son to propitiate his God, had not the custom been well established. In the case of Jephthah's daughter the sacrifice was actually allowed. We come upon the same custom in the fate of Iphigenia at a critical turning point in the world's mercy; in her stead the life of a lesser animal, as in Isaac's case, was accepted.
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