Talk:Iphigenia

Aeschylus?
There should probably be a reference to Iphigenia from Aeschylus' Oresteia, specifically lines 183 - 257. In this version of events she was actually sacrificed. --Emecee 07:13, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Homer?
"Homer makes no mention to Iphigenia's sacrifice" In the the Illiad 1:106, Agamemnon becomes enraged at Calchas for suggesting that he give up his prize, sighting accusing him of repeatedly bringing bad news to him. The two other prophecies Calchas made was that Achelies was needed to win the trojan war, and that Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. So there is a reference made to the sacrifice of Iphigenia, I have 'been bold' and added 'direct mention', it should be noted that many classical writers found the act to awful to directly mention, note Aeschylus's Agamemnon, the corus trails aludes to the sacrifice, but never downright talks about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigmacd24 (talk • contribs) 07:48, 14 December 2005


 * In Book 9, Homer specifically mentions three living daughters of Agamemnon - Iphianassa, Chrysothemis, and Laodice. Presumably Iphianassa is Iphigenia and Laodice is Electra.  john k (talk) 20:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Added a ref to lead secn of Electra that sources this. --Jerzy•t 06:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup
The body of the article is not well-written. If someone has the time to polish the style, that would be great. Levan 04:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The content might be revised too. A mention of Brauron, for instance. Some sourcing of statements. The essential confusion here comes from trying to synthesis a biography of Iphigeneia, in the manner of Bulfinch's "Age of Fable''. --Wetman 19:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Spelling
Why are we using that extra "e"? It's usually "Iphigenia" in English. john k (talk) 20:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. "Iphigenia" is a far more common spelling in English than "Iphigeneia", and per Use common names, I have moved the page to "Iphigenia". —Lowellian (reply) 17:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * So what about Iphigeneia at Aulis (which was apparently once moved already from ) and Iphigeneia in Tauris? Note that all three pages with "ei" have about 200 links to them plus a considerable number of interwiki links whereas the "i"-only pages have comparatively few links to them. Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

And what about the Greek transliteration - shouldn't it be "Ifigeneia" instead of "Iphigeneia" according to the well-known and generally observed transliteration rules for Greek? I am going to change it to that effect.

Possible WP:COPYVIO
Extract from text by "Senex Magister" at Artists and their Art: "'In order to escape the persecutions of the Erinyes for killing his mother Clytemnestra and her lover, he has been ordered by Apollo to go to Tauris carry off the xoanon (carved wooden cult image) of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, and bring it to Athens. He has repaired to Tauris with Pylades, son of Strophius and intimate friend of Orestes, but the pair are at once imprisoned by the Tauri, among whom the custom is to sacrifice all Greek strangers to Artemis. The priestess of Artemis, whose duty it is to perform the sacrifice, offers to release Orestes if he will carry home a letter from her to Greece; he refuses to go, but bids Pylades take the letter while he himself will stay and be slain. After a conflict of mutual affection, Pylades at last yields, but the letter brings about recognition between brother and sister, and all three escape together, carrying with them the image of Artemis. Here the play ends. After their return to Greece, Orestes takes possession of his father's kingdom of Mycenae and Argos and Iphigenia leaves the image in the temple of Artemis in Brauron, Attica, where she remains as priestess of Artemis Brauronia. According to the Spartans, however, the image of Artemis was transported by them to Laconia, where the goddess was worshipped as Artemis Orthia.'"

Wikipedia text, added 27 April 2010: "'In order for Orestes to escape the persecutions of the Erinyes for killing his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Orestes has been ordered by Apollo to go to Tauris. While in Tauris Orestes is to carry off the xoanon (carved wooden cult image) of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, and bring it to Athens. When Orestes arrives at Tauris with Pylades, son of Strophius and intimate friend of Orestes, the pair are at once captured by the Tauri, among whom the custom is to sacrifice all Greek strangers to Artemis. The priestess of Artemis is Iphigenia, and it is her duty to perform the sacrifice. Iphigenia and Orestes don’t recognize each other. Iphigenia finds out from Orestes, whom is still concealing his identity, that Orestes is alive. Iphigenia then offers to release Orestes if he will carry home a letter from her to Greece. Orestes refuses to go, but bids Pylades to take the letter while Orestes will stay to be slain. After a conflict of mutual affection, Pylades at last yields, but the letter brings about recognition between brother and sister, and all three escape together, carrying with them the image of Artemis. After their return to Greece, Orestes takes possession of his father's kingdom of Mycenae and Argos. Iphigenia leaves the image in the temple of Artemis in Brauron, Attica, where she remains as priestess of Artemis Brauronia. According to the Spartans, however, the image of Artemis was transported by them to Laconia, where the goddess was worshipped as Artemis Orthia.'"

Wayback machine checked, but the particular page didn't feature. Most of the site seems to have been put together 2002—2007. An overview from someone familiar with the history of this page, and an assessment of whether or not the material is "too close for comfort", requested.--Old Moonraker (talk) 06:12, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Iphigenia in Aulis
Under the heading 'Post-Homeric Greek myth', discussing whether or not Agammemnon actually killed Iphigenia, we have "According to the earliest versions he did so", but the reference noted at the end of the sentence points only to the version of the story in which a deer is substituted for Iphigenia.

At several points in the course of the article, and particularly in the section 'Some adaptations of the Iphigenia story' there is coverage of the version in which Iphigenia is not killed. At no point can I see any reference to "the earliest versions" of the story in which Iphigenia is killed. The article needs at least references to the relevant classical sources, if not a section discussing the issue of apparent classical aversion to versions in which she is killed.

A minor point: under 'Some modern sources', we have "Shanower, E. Age of Bronze: Sacrifice, 2005." - this would be more appropriate under the following section 'Some adaptations of the Iphigenia story' - apologies for not simply doing this myself, I'm very new.

Hwscot (talk) 18:12, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation
The article implies that there is one accepted pronunciation of the name, but from what I can tell there are maybe a dozen different variations. Even if we limit ourselves to American English pronunciations, there are multiple forms. The one that's currently given in the article (if-eh-jeh-NYE-uh) doesn't even seem to be one of the more popular ones.

Most of the generally-accepted pronunciations have a hard "G", which is probably closer to the Greek; French, unsurprisingly, goes with a "zh" sound there. Most pronunciations seem to have the next-to-last syllable as "nee" rather than "nye"; the latter seems to stem from direct phonic reading of the digraph "ει" in the Greek spelling which was translated in this article to IPA, even though the Greek Alphabet entry here says that it should be , which I think might be better rendered as giving "nay" instead. There's the long-standing issue of which syllable is to be stressed in Greek names: the ante-penultimate one or the penultimate one? And then there's the question of exactly how the various other vowels are rendered. Doug Pardee (talk) 23:41, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Why need we limit ourselves to American English? the BBC prescribes: "/ˌɪfɪdʒɪˈʌɪə/ (if-ij-in-y-uh)"; this is close to the article, with the soft "g".  What are the sources for "doesn't even seem to be one of the more popular ones"? The BBC's world-wide reach would seem to disprove this, and a "seem to be" isn't necessarily strong enough to change the article.  Citing BBC Guide to Pronunciation ISBN 978-0-19-280710-6.--Old Moonraker (talk) 05:47, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Cymon and Iphigenia
I removed a section called "Cymon and Iphigenia". This article is about Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. The Iphigenia in "Cymon and Iphigenia" is not the same character; they just share the same name. It's like including "Mary, Queen of Scots" in an article about the Virgin Mary. The source for Cymon and Iphigenia is the Decameron. It is already explained there. I've quoted the text from this article below. I'll update the redirect pages. --GoldCoastPrior (talk) 18:09, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

"Lord Frederic Leighton - Cymon and Iphigenia - Google Art Project.jpg]] The episode of Iphigenia and Cymon that inspired such painters as Benjamin West (1773), John Everett Millais (1848) and Frederic Leighton (1884) is not a Greek myth, but a novella taken from Boccaccio's Decameron and developed in heroic couplets by the poet and dramatist John Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia" (1700) which was prefaced by a mild rejoinder to Jeremy Collier's pamphlet A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698)

The tale was intended to demonstrate the civilizing power of love. As Iphigenia sleeps in a grove by the sea, a noble, but coarse and unlettered Cypriot youth, Cymon, seeing Iphigenia's beauty, falls in love with her. Cymon, by the power of love, becomes an educated and polished courtier."

- Previous version of the article

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Plays are not mythology
Plays by Aeschylus and Euripides should not be mentioned under mythology. Their references should be extracted and separated. They diverge from mythological sources from writers such as Hyginus.

ICE77 (talk) 05:41, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Iphigenia, classical receptions
A new section on ancient receptions of Iphigenia lore (especially in the Greek novels) would be a helpful addition to this article. See Anna Lefteratou's book Mythological Narratives for a detailed exploration of such receptions.

A recent summary, together with an argument that Iphigenia myth is retold in the canonical Acts of the Apostles, may be found in Bilby, Mark. G. and Anna Lefteratou. "A Dramatic Heist of Epic Proportion:  Iphigenia among the Taurians  in the Acts of the Apostles,"  Harvard Theological Review  115.4 (2002) 496-518. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816022000293

Full disclosure of potential bias: As one of the co-authors of this article, I'm suggesting that this article be consulted and considered by Wikipedia editors, not presuming to evaluate whether it merits citation in this entry. Vocesanticae (talk) 19:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)