enough, therefore, they were all gradually absorbed by the
prevailing worship of Artemis. Tauropolis became an epithet of
Artemis, Iphigenia became her priestess and 'Keybearer.' And the
word 'Tauropolis,' which had become obscure, was explained as a
reference to the Tauri. The old rude image of Tauropolis had come
from the Tauri, and the strange ritual was descended from their
bloody rites. So the Taurian goddess must be Artemis too. The
tendency of ancient polytheism, when it met with some alien
religion, was not to treat the alien gods as entirely new persons,
but assuming the real and obvious existence of their own gods, to
inquire by what names and with what ritual the strangers
worshipped them.

As usual in Euripides, the central character of this play is a
woman, and a woman most unsparingly yet lovingly studied.
Iphigenia is no mere 'sympathetic heroine.' She is a worthy member
of her great but sinister house; a haggard and exiled woman,
eating out her heart in two conflicting emotions: intense longing
for home and all that she had loved in childhood, and bitter self-
pitying rage against 'her murderers.' The altar of Aulis is
constantly in her thoughts. She does not know whether to hate her
father, but at least she can with a clear conscience hate all the
rest of those implicated, Calchas, Odysseus, Menelaus, and most
fiercely, though somewhat unjustly, Helen. All the good women in
Euripides go wild at the name of Helen. Iphigenia broods on her
wrongs till she can see nothing else; she feels as if she hated
all Greeks, and lived only for revenge, for the hope of some day
slaughtering Greeks at her altar, as pitilessly as they
slaughtered her at Aulis. She knows how horrible this state of
mind is, but she is now "turned to stone, and has no pity left in