INTRODUCTION TO
IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
The Date
There is no external evidence for the date of Iphigenia in
Tauris (it should be Iphigenia among the Taurians, but the
other title has become regular through use); it has, however,
been generally placed between 414 and 410 B.C., and there
are good reasons for this. Meter is an excellent guide in dating
the plays of Euripides, and metrically this play is similar to
The Trojan Women (415), Electra (413), and Helen (412).
In structure and plot Iphigenia is a romance or romantic
comedy? and Euripides at this time seems to have been much
interested in the possibilities of this type of play. The plots of
Iphigenia and Helen are in many ways almost identical. In
both, a woman who has been miraculously transported to the
barbaric ends of the earth (Scythia, Egypt) and there held in
honorable captivity is convinced, on the slightest kind of evi-
dence, that the man in the world she loves most (brother,
husband), her sole possible deliverer, is dead. Almost immedi-
ately she meets this very man and, after some misunderstand-
ing, rushes into his arms in a joyful recognition scene. She
then, with female guile (women, to Euripides, are more stra-
tegic than men) contrives their escape by working on the
simple piety of the barbarian king, whose vengefulness is dis-
pelled by the appearance of divinities (Athene, the Heavenly
Twins), and all end at peace in the prospect of a happy future.
This similarity might, however, be less striking if we possessed
the lost plays of Euripides, since it is clear that he wrote many
romantic comedies. Ion (possibly 411 B.C.) shares some of
these features (supposed death and miraculous transportation,
catastrophe barely averted, climax in recognition, happy end-
ing) but is an example of the purer foundling-story. Our tenta-
367