The Image and thy sister. When ye come To god-built Athens, lo, a land there is Half hid on Attica's last boundaries, A little land, hard by Karystus' Rock, But sacred. It is called by Attic folk Halae. Build there a temple, and bestow Therein thine Image, that the world may know The tale of Tauris and of thee, cast out From pole to pole of Greece, a blood-hound rout Of ill thoughts driving thee. So through the whole Of time to Artemis the Tauropole Shall men make hymns at Halae. And withal Give them this law. At each high festival, A sword, in record of thy death undone, Shall touch a man's throat, and the red blood run-- One drop, for old religion's sake. In this Shall live that old red rite of Artemis. And them, Iphigenia, by the stair Of Brauron in the rocks, the Key shalt bear Of Artemis. There shalt thou live and die, And there have burial. And a gift shall lie Above thy shrine, fair raiment undefiled Left upon earth by mothers dead with child.

Ye last, O exiled women, true of heart And faithful found, ye shall in peace depart, Each to her home: behold Athena's will.

Orestes, long ago on Ares' Hill I saved thee, when the votes of Death and Life Lay equal: and henceforth, when men at strife So stand, mid equal votes of Life and Death, My law shall hold that Mercy conquereth. Begone. Lead forth thy sister from this shore In peace; and thou, Thoas, be wroth no more.

THOAS. Most high Athena, he who bows not low His head to God's word spoken, I scarce know How such an one doth live. Orestes hath Fled with mine Image hence ... I bear no wrath. Nor yet against his sister. There is naught, Methinks, of honour in a battle fought 'Gainst gods. The strength is theirs. Let those two fare Forth to thy land and plant mine Image there. I wish them well.

These bondwomen no less I will send free to Greece and happiness, And stay my galleys' oars, and bid this brand Be sheathed again, Goddess, at thy command.

ATHENA. 'Tis well, O King. For that which needs must be Holdeth the high gods as it holdeth thee.

Winds of the north, O winds that laugh and run, Bear now to Athens Agamemnon's son: Myself am with you, o'er long leagues of foam Guiding my sister's hallowed Image home.

[she floats away.]

CHORUS. SOME WOMEN.

Go forth in bliss, O ye whose lot God shieldeth, that ye perish not!

OTHERS.

O great in our dull world of clay, And great in heaven's undying gleam, Pallas, thy bidding we obey: And bless thee, for mine ears have heard The joy and wonder of a word Beyond my dream, beyond my dream.

NOTES TO IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS

P. 3, 1. 1.--Oenomaus, King of Elis, offered his daughter and his kingdom to any man who should beat him in a chariot race; those who failed he slew. Pelops challenged him and won the race through a trick of his servant, Myrtilus, who treacherously took the linchpins out of Oenomaus's chariot. Oenomaus was thrown out and killed; Pelops took the kingdom, but in remorse or indignation threw Myrtilus into the sea (1. 192, p. 11). In some stories Oenomaus killed the suitors by spearing them from behind when they passed him. Pelops was the son of Tantalus, renowned for his pride and its punishment.

P. 3, 1. 8, For Helen's sake.--i.e. in order to win Helen back from the Trojans.

P. 4, 1. 23, Whatever birth most fair.--Artemis Kalliste ("Most Fair") was apparently so called because, after a competition for beauty, that which won the prize ([Greek Text]) was selected and given to her. This rite is made by the story to lead to a sacrifice of the fairest maiden, and may very possibly have sometimes done so.

P. 4, 1. 42.--She tells her dream to the sky to get it off her mind, much as the Nurse does in the Medea (p. 5,1.57).

P. 5, 1. 50, One ... pillar.--It is worth remembering that a pillar was among the earliest objects of worship in Crete and elsewhere. Cf. "the pillared sanctities" (1. 128, p. 9) and the "blood on the pillars" (1. 405, p. 20).

P. 8, 1. 113, A hollow one might creep through.--The metopes, or gaps between the beams. The Temple was therefore of a primitive Dorian type.

P. 8, 11. 124-125.--The land of Tauris is conceived as being beyond the Symplegades, or, as here, as being the country of the Symplegades.

As these semi-mythical names settled down in history, Tauris became the Crimea, the Symplegades, or "Clashing Rocks," or "Dark- Blue Rocks," became two rocks at the upper end of the Bosphorus, and the Friendless or Strangerless Sea became the Euxine. The word Axeinos, "Friendless," has often been altered in the MSS. of this play to Euxeinos, "Hospitable," which was the ordinary prose name of the Black Sea in historical times.

P. 9, l. 133, The horses and the towers.--The steppes of the Taurians would have no gardens or city walls, but it is curious that Hellas should seem specially a land of horses by comparison. Cf. p. 86, l. 1423, where Thoas has horses.

P. 10, l. 168, The golden goblet, &c.--She evidently takes jars of libation from the Attendants and pours them during the next few lines into some Eschara, or Altar for the Dead. Most of the rite would probably be performed kneeling.

P. 11, ll. 192 ff., The dark and wheeling coursers.--i.e. those of Pelops. The cry of one betrayed: Myrtilus, when he was thrown into the sea. (See on l. 1.) For the Golden Lamb and the Sun turning in Heaven, see my translation of Electra, p. 47, l. 699 and note.

P. 12, l. 217, The Nereid's Son.--Achilles, son of Peleus and the Nereid Thetis.

P. 13, l. 238, The Herdsman's entrance.--Observe how Iphigenia is first merely disturbed in her obsequies: then comes the sickening news that there are strangers to sacrifice: then lastly, her worst fear is realised; the men are Greeks. This explains her exasperated tone in l. 254, "The sea! What is the sea ..." and "Go back!"--The Herdsman is merely jubilant and obtuse.

P. 15, l. 263.--The murex or purple-fish could only be collected in very late autumn or early spring; consequently the fishers made encampments for the winter and returned to Tyre and Sidon, or wherever else they came from, after the spring fishing. See Berard, Pheniciens et Odyssee, i. 415.

P. 15, 1. 270, Son of the White Sea Spirit, &c.--The man is, of course, made to use the names of Greek not of Taurian gods. He thinks first of Palaemon, a sea-god, son of Leucothea ("White- Goddess"), then of the Dioskori, Castor and Polydeuces; then vaguely of some spirits beloved of Nereus, the Ancient of the Sea.

P. 17, 1. 328 f., Of all those shots not one struck home.--The object of this statement must be to explain why the two heroes do not make their appearance bruised and dishevelled as the Second Messenger does after his fight with the Greeks. Of course there is no great harm in making the Taurians bad shots as well as cowards, and possibly there is some value in the suggestion of a supernatural protection which is only saving its object for a crueller death. But very likely the two lines are interpolations.

Pp. 17, 18, 11. 342 ff.--A wonderful speech, illustrating the gradual breaking-up of the ice in Iphigenia's nature.--The Herdsman's story has, of course, been horrible to her; all the more so because he expects her to enjoy it and recalls wild words she has uttered in the past, when brooding on her wrongs. She controls her feelings absolutely till the man is gone. Then she feels like one turned to stone, pitiless; then, if only it were Helen or Menelaus that she had to kill! Then vivid thoughts of the misery and horror of Aulis and the poor foolish hopes and tremors in which she had come there; then the thought that Orestes, the one man whom she could love without resentment, is dead. Then a rage of indignation against the bloody rites and the infamy of the thing she has to do. She goes into the Temple broken in nerve and almost ready for rebellion.

P. 19, 11. 385 ff.--Leto, beloved of Zeus, was the mother of Artemis and Apollo, who were born in the holy island of Delos.-- One legend, already rejected by Pindar, said that the crime of Tantalus was that he had given his child Pelops to the gods to eat.

P. 19, 1. 392, Dark of the sea.--The Dark-Blue of the Symplegades is meant. Sometimes it is only the Argo that has ever passed