IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS

Theseus in Heracles, of Orestes, Pylades, and Electra in
Orestes (a trio of cutthroats, to be sure, but their love seems
to be real), and of the three friends here. Friendship and the
love of Greek for Greek may indeed be symbolized for Eu-
ripides during this period in those Dorian twins, Castor and
Polydeuces (Pollux) who appear at the end of Helen and
Electra. Polydeuces refused to survive his brother. The twins
have no place in this story; yet Euripides goes out of his way
to bring them in (1. 272), since they are the prototypes and
patrons of those who put all selfishness aside and make the for-
tunes of their friends their own.

The Translation
The editors asked the distinguished poet Witter Bynner for
permission to use his translation originally made in 1915. This
translation seemed to them to be in many ways the first mod-
ern translation. The present text represents Mr. Bynner's
carefully polished revision of a manuscript created under cir-
cumstances best recounted by him:
It might be wondered, when what little Greek I had learned at
college was forgotten, why and how I came to venture a version in
English of a Euripidean play.
In 1914, Isadora Duncan with her six dancers had for some time
been bringing Greek figures and friezes to life on the stages of several
nations. Almost everyone connected in those days with any of the arts
knew Isadora; and when she had been given use of the New Theater
near Columbus Circle in New York, later called the Century Theater,
we often heard her wish for a "right translation" of a Greek play to
produce there. She had removed orchestra seats to make a deep-
aproned stage on which she offered almost daily, at public perform-
ances, her rehearsals and experiments in dance and drama. Charging
dearly for what lower seats were left but only ten cents for a gallery
seat, she attracted substantial and ardent audiences to an exciting
laboratory unique in American history. After her production of
Oedipus Rex—the lead well played by her brother, Augustin—she
kept begging me to try my hand at a version of Iphigenia in Tauris,
which, she said from some knowledge or other, "though superbly
simple in the original, had never been humanly translated into Eng-
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