The Myth of Iphigenia | Agamemnon's Daughter, Artemis, and the Trojan War Departure

The Greek allied fleet is packed tightly together at the port of Aulis. The ships are ready and the soldiers have all assembled, yet the fleet has not moved a single step forward for days.

The problem was that no wind was blowing. But once the name of a goddess and of the commander-in-chief's daughter began to be mentioned alongside this stalled wind, a simple weather problem turned into an entirely different story.

The Fleet Stalled at Aulis

The Greek forces bound for Troy had gathered at a port called Aulis. The commander-in-chief was Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and numerous kings and generals had assembled there with their troops.

The problem was that the wind needed to launch the ships would not come. This stagnation, lasting not just a day or two but continuing on and on, stretched out strangely long to be dismissed as mere weather.

Alongside this situation, the name that tradition points to is Artemis, the goddess who governs the hunt and wild beasts. Word began to spread among the soldiers that the reason the fleet could not put out to sea lay not in nature, but in this goddess's will.

Why the Daughter's Name Was Invoked

According to the tradition preserved in ancient texts, Artemis was enraged at this fleet, and the seer Calchas conveyed through an oracle the way to appease her wrath. In this tradition recorded by Apollodorus, Calchas declared that the fleet could not put out to sea until Agamemnon's daughter was offered as a sacrifice, and the name thus singled out was none other than that of the commander-in-chief Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia.

For Agamemnon, having his own daughter's name bandied about as a sacrifice before the stranded soldiers was no mere predicament. It was the moment when his role as the commander who must lead the fleet and his role as a father who must protect his daughter collided head-on.

According to the tradition handed down by Apollodorus, Agamemnon sent Odysseus and Talthybius to his wife Clytemnestra in Mycenae to deliver a promise that Iphigenia would be married to the Greek hero Achilles. Hearing this news of marriage, the daughter set out for Aulis with her mother, but what awaited her upon arrival was not a wedding but an altar.

Before the Altar, the Story Splits in Two

What actually happened to Iphigenia before the altar is told differently across the texts. From this point on, the story does not merge into one but clearly splits into two branches.

One tradition says she was made a sacrifice as she was and lost her life. It is an ending in which the daughter is sacrificed by her father's hand, or by her father's decision.

The other tradition depicts the exact opposite moment. In the final instant before the sacrifice was made, Artemis herself intervened, swapped Iphigenia on the altar for a deer, and secretly carried her away to another place.

Both stories are traditions old enough to have survived and been passed down to later generations, so it is difficult to declare either one alone the canonical version. When reading this myth, rather than seeking a single ending, it is more accurate to first accept the fact that these two divergent endings were transmitted side by side.

The Deer and Tauris, the Tradition of Survival

Following the tradition of rescue, Artemis left a deer on the altar in her place and moved Iphigenia to a strange land called Tauris. It was a place very far from Greece.

In this tradition, Iphigenia appears not as one who died, but as a figure who goes on to a new life in Tauris. It means that the woman who seemed to vanish from the altar at Aulis was, in fact, living a different story in a different land.

The same person is portrayed on one side as a sacrificed daughter, and on the other as a figure who was carried off to a strange land and survived. The two stories thus paint Iphigenia's later life in completely different ways.

Endings Left Differently by Each Author

This event is not a story that came from a single hand. Aeschylus, Apollodorus, and Ovid each treated the event in their own works, and the later recorder Pausanias likewise left behind the traditions he encountered.

The details they convey differ slightly from one another. Some place weight on the side that the sacrifice was actually carried out, while others tell the story of the deer substitution and rescue. Depending on which author you read first, the very impression of the figure Iphigenia can change.

For this reason, the ending of Iphigenia is more accurately understood not as a single, settled historical fact, but as a story in which multiple literary traditions overlap and are transmitted together. Whether the fleet actually left Aulis after this event is also a matter of historical fact that is difficult to settle with the sources that remain today.

The Father Agamemnon, and the Story That Follows

Iphigenia's father was Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief who led the Greek expeditionary force. This event at Aulis surrounding his daughter was the first trial he faced before departing for Troy, and this choice before the altar—having to pick between the commander who must lead the fleet and the father who must protect his daughter—follows his story even after he returns home from the war. In Aeschylus's tragedy, this weight extends to his wife Clytemnestra as well, and this event is cited as one of the motives for her revenge against her husband. However, this chain of causation belongs to the realm depicted by Aeschylus's tragedy, and is not a passage directly narrated in Homer's epics. You can continue reading about the path Agamemnon takes afterward in the myth of Agamemnon, and about Clytemnestra's story toward him in the myth of Clytemnestra.

If you are curious about exactly what kind of deity Artemis is—the one who tied the fleet's feet and demanded a sacrifice—and what she governs, you can explore it in the myth of Artemis. The story of Achilles, the representative hero of the Greek forces who joined the same expedition, can be continued in the myth of Achilles.