Self-Consciousness
and the Symbolon in Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis
Lydia Pikyi Cheung (CAS '07) is majoring
in International Relations and Economics with minoring in Political
Science and Classical Greek. This paper, written for Professor
Degener's WR150: Tragedy and Thought, was awarded second place
in the CAS Prize Essay contest.
For I speak most clearly to those who understand
but to those who do not I remain concealed.
(Ag. 38-39 trans. Degener)
The most unprecedented feature of Euripides’ Iphigeneia
at Aulis is the tragedian’s reinvention of the epic tradition
through Iphigeneia’s sacrifice from the Cypria. With
his extraordinary ingenuity, Euripides brings his audience to
a higher level of self-awareness by incorporating the intricacies
of Aeschylus’ treatment of the archaic symbolon in
Agamemnon, a motif conceived five decades earlier.
In “The Cæsura of the Symbolon in Aeschylus’
Agamemnon,” Michael Degener uncovers the role of the
contractual logic of the symbolon – the “casting together,”
or sym-ballein – in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and
the compensatory murder of Agamemnon, the true understanding
of which would be revealed by solving the intertwinement of
the aural and visual registers. When Aeschylus’ Chorus declare,
“They did not see, and I do not say,” (Ag. 248) at
the very moment in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, the disassociation
of speech and sight radically terminates the audience’s imagination
or really their mental participation in the sacrifice, thus
suspending their dramatic trance and bringing them back to an
awareness of themselves. Iphigeneia at Aulis is Euripides’ adaptation of the
epic events leading up to the sacrifice of Iphigeneia which
Aeschylus leaves out in Agamemnon. Departing from the
Cypria, Euripides’ Agamemnon strategically camouflages
his plan to sacrifice his daughter by throwing together the
symbolon of Iphigeneia’s false marriage and her sacrifice.
Yet in juxtaposition to this first symbolon that belongs
to the outward realm of circumstance is another symbolon,
one of the often incoherent visual and aural registers of reported
information, in the inward realm of cognition. Through
an enigmatic interplay of sight and sound at the end of the
play after Iphigeneia’s ambiguous death, Euripides goads his
audience to question the authenticity of the messenger’s report
of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia – which they do not
see – and thus inspires them to a higher consciousness of their
experience. I shall begin by reviewing Aeschylus’ treatment
of the symbolon and its significance in Agamemnon.
I shall go on to analyze Euripides’ contrivance of Agamemnon’s
letter – the message intended to prevent Iphigeneia from arriving
at Aulis – to his old servant. This original scene serves as
Euripides’ introduction of the concept of the “casting together”
of the aural and visual registers in relation to the authenticity
of the message thus transmitted. In my consideration of the
events in the later section of the play, with regard to the
failure of the audience’s aural and visual experiences to unite
coherently in the report of Iphigeneia’s death, I will set out
to challenge the respective credibility of the prophet and the
messenger, which has yet received little attention in secondary
literature. When Clytaemestra sees that she does not see what
happens during the sacrifice, she attains a new level of self-awareness;
by way of contrast, Agamemnon fails to free himself from self-delusion,
as he unquestioningly believes in the prophet’s oral account.
In the last section, I shall revisit Agamemnon and
Aeschylus’ notion of “seeing with open eyes” as the
means of attaining true understanding and analyze Euripides’
conception of vision and knowledge in his tragedy.
Casting Together the Dialogue of the Symbolon
The motif of the false marriage in Iphigeneia at Aulis
distinguishes Euripides’ version of the sacrifice from Aeschylus’.
In Euripides’ tragedy, Agamemnon uses the pretext of marriage
to summon his daughter Iphigeneia to Aulis, simultaneously deceiving
his would be son-in-law Achilles and ultimately arranging the
sacrifice of the maiden in front of the army. Meanwhile, Aeschylus’
trilogy contains no account of similar manipulation before the
moment of the sacrifice. Euripides’ expansion of this otherwise
minor footnote from the Cypria sets up the basic narrative
structure of his Iphigeneia at Aulis. He creates a
fundamental tension between Agamemnon and his wife Clytaemestra,
the former trying his very best to disguise his agenda while
the latter will eventually expose the treachery. Several scholars,
including Helene Foley, have considered the outward similarity
between rituals of marriage and sacrifice (68–78). This similarity
forms the foundation allowing Agamemnon to plan his sacrifice
while proceeding as if Iphigeneia is to be married, deceiving
both his daughter and his wife. The recognizable features specific
to both the rites of marriage and sacrifice include, for example,
the sacred barley, garland, song, and dance (IA 435–39) that
the messenger urges Agamemnon and Menelaus to prepare. He announces
the arrival of Iphigeneia, the long parting (IA 651) and voyage
(IA 667) that Agamemnon mentions as he explains his tears upon
reunion with his daughter, the reference to the other house
(IA 690) to which Iphigeneia will be handed over, and, finally,
the “preliminary sacrifice” (IA 718) that will ultimately prove
to be the fatal sacrifice. Indeed, Agamemnon still exploits
this similarity by referring to the basins, barley, and calves
in his attempt to conceal his plan to sacrifice his daughter
(IA 1111–13) even after Clytaemestra has learned of his plans
for the sacrifice from her old servant.
The pairing of the sacrifice and the false marriage is by no
means superficial. As the messenger joyfully announces the arrival
of Iphigeneia and Clytaemestra (IA 414-39), Agamemnon finds
no way to face his loved ones yet hesitates to abort the sacrifice:
Well, then... what shall I say to my wife?
How will I receive her? What sort of expression will I
throw together [symbalo]?
(IA 454–55)
As a solution, Euripides’ Agamemnon “throws together,” symbalo
– from symballein, the root of symbolon –
Iphigeneia’s false marriage with her sacrifice, thus camouflaging
his true plan. Here the tragedian is echoing the undertones
of Aeschylus’ original exploitation of the symbolon
in Agamemnon, in which the sacrifice of Iphigeneia
and Clytaemestra’s compensatory “sacrifice” of Agamemnon upon
his triumphant return from Troy are presented as the two halves
of the symbolon being “cast together” (Degener 72).
The archaic symbolon, the two conjoining halves of
a token commonly used to verify identity in diplomacy or faith
in commerce, bears a much different significance from the modern
conception of the symbolic, or the word “symbol.” For instance,
as Degener argues (69-71) we see its foremost predominance at
Ag. 144, where the symbola – not the goddess
Artemis, contrary to the conventional interpretation – demands
to govern as the subject of the sentence, and urge on the second
“sacrifice” of Agamemnon as recompense for the first sacrifice
of Iphigeneia: “The symbola of these things demand
to hold sway…” (trans. Degener). Furthermore, Artemis does not
demand the sacrifice of the maiden but abhors it; instead,
the contractual nature of the two matching halves of the symbolon
governs Agamemnon’s eventual murder. Yet before Agamemnon’s
death effects the unification of the symbolon, already
the first sacrifice of the maiden has merged literally,
by a deliberate textual ambiguity, with the earlier portent
of the two eagles devouring the pregnant hare (Degener 71-73):
“Sacrificing the cowering hare with her own brood before their
birth / Sacrificing before the ambuscade the cowering child,
his own … “ (Ag. 136 trans. Degener). Indeed, the complexity
of the seer Calchas’ interpretation of the omen crystallizes
at this very line, where almost every word bears an intended
double meaning. In relation to Iphigeneia at Aulis
in this regard, when Clytaemestra in Euripides’ tragedy sees
through and puts an end to Agamemnon’s deception, she explicitly
refuses to use “double meanings” any more (IA 1147) as she exposes
his plot. In addition, Euripides’ Iphigeneia fulfills the inevitable
contractual relationship of the two halves of the symbolon in
embracing her sacrifice as a metaphorical marriage in the end,
as we see in her references to marriage and children (IA 1399)
before her sacrifice, her desire for dances (IA 1480) and songs
(IA 1492), and her request that Clytaemestra not mourn for her
(IA 1437–38) but bury her (IA 1442–43).
It is not surprising that by tracking this imagery of “throwing
together” or indeed the very word symballein that the
symbolon in the Agamemnon would be revealed.
As Degener has analyzed in detail, both halves of the symbolon
unmistakably bear the stigma of “casting from the eye”: on the
one hand, Iphigeneia casts silently from her eyes “piteous missiles”
upon the sacrificers during the sacrifice (Ag. 241),
and on the other hand, Agamemnon pleads that no god would strike
him with their eyes as he steps onto Clytaemestra’s tapestries,
which presages his death (Ag. 947). Apart from the
crucial identification of its two halves, Aeschylus visualizes
more than once the contractual logic of the symbolon,
which, curiously, also relates directly to the eye. The first
example occurs during the watchman’s speech, when he is “on
the lookout of the symbolon of the signal fire” (Ag.
8 trans. Degener 63), he expresses the fear that his eyelids
would be “forcefully thrown together [symballein] in
sleep” (Ag. 15 trans. Degener 64), thus directly connecting
the symbolon with an instant in which the two halves
of a whole – the upper and lower eyelids – reunite. Similarly,
as Cassandra embraces her own death after prophesying the murder
of Agamemnon and thus witnesses the unification of the two halves
of the symbolon, she declares that she can finally
“close up these eyes” (Ag. 1294 trans. Lattimore) and
rest. However, beyond these two examples we see a yet more enlightening
aspect of the act of “casting” that leads to a higher self-awareness
among the chorus of old men. Puzzled by Calchas’ prophecy yet
painfully aware of their own incomprehension, they pray that
they may “strike truly the grief from [their] mind” (Ag.
165-66, trans. Degener 75), as if the very act of “striking”
will help them to strike away their ignorance that impedes their
true understanding of the prophecy (Degener 79).
Inheriting Aeschylus’ original exegesis of the symbolon,
Euripides’ other application of the motif occurs in Agamemnon’s
prologue, when the hands of Helen’s suitors are joined together
in defense and thus pledge the oath of her marriage (IA 59-65)
– the original cause of the invasion of Troy and thus Iphigeneia’s
death. The marriage of Helen and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia
are like the folds of a letter that are joined together by a
seal, one that can hardly be sundered.
The Letter: Written and Spoken, Seen and Heard
The letters that Agamemnon writes and rewrites to Clytaemestra
in the beginning of Iphigeneia at Aulis have not received
adequate attention or analysis, especially when we can fairly
agree at this point that every original invention of the tragedian
bears its specific purpose. Yet before our actual discussion,
it is also worth pointing out that Euripides includes a similar
motif in his earlier Iphigeneia among the Taurians.
In this play the deified Iphigeneia asks Pylades to deliver
her letter to her brother Orestes, at the same time telling
him the contents of her letter, in case he, should he lose it,
would know its contents. Iphigeneia thus ironically conveys
the message herself to her brother, who, after listening beside
Pylades, receives at their reunion the letter in hand and thus
its message in both spoken and written forms. In this earlier
instance the letter functions as the agent facilitating Iphigeneia’s
reunion with Orestes – an apparent stranger to her whose true
identity would otherwise remain concealed.
Euripides surely contrives his original inventions with a specific
agenda in mind. Foley interprets the letter in Iphigeneia
at Aulis as a “metatheatrical image” in which “Agamemnon
as a writer or rewriter of myth functions for the moment as
the poet’s double” (94). While this reading does shed light
on Euripides’ alteration of traditional myth and the tension
he thus creates, it fails to address its deeper implications
once we have a glimpse of Euripides’ symbolon. Like
the signal fire in the prologue of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
that “bears forth from Troy the speech” (Ag.
9 trans. Degener 63), and which Degener argues sets up the juxtaposition
of the aural and visual registers, Euripides’ letter in Iphigeneia
at Aulis similarly signifies a synthesis of the visual
and aural registers, as Agamemnon hands the letter to the old
servant and at the same time reads the text aloud:
OLD MAN
Go on! Tell me, so the words I say
can confirm what you write!
(IA 117-18)
However, although Agamemnon has specifically reminded the old
servant to “take good care of the seal” (IA 155) – another allusion
to the symbolon – neither register of the letter fulfills
its objective of stopping Iphigeneia from going to Aulis (IA
119-23). On the one hand, Menelaus intercepts the written text
of the letter by taking the old servant by force and breaking
the seal; on the other hand, Clytaemestra, interrogating her
old servant, learns from his spoken words of Agamemnon’s final
decision to sacrifice Iphigeneia, which is inconsistent with
this letter’s message.
Immediately following the letter scene in which Agamemnon dispatches
his old servant with his letter to Clytaemestra, the chorus
of young foreign women at the Greek army camp at Aulis give
their enthusiastic account of the heroes, navy ships, and sailors
they see. Like Agamemnon commanding his servant, they put together
what they have seen and heard about the Greek army in their
first choral ode:
That’s what they told me,
and I saw that army of sailors.
…
I saw there, just as I heard at home,
I keep safe the memory
of that army called together.
(IA 294-95; 300-02)
This exceptionally long opening choral ode seems to serve as
a preparation for the audience’s visual imagination as the rich
spoken descriptions the Chorus presents give rise to
images that are only “seen” in the audience’s mind. Moreover,
the ode is a “calling together” of what they are seeing at Aulis
and what they heard at home. This synthesis of the visual and
aural registers is critical to the transmittance of information:
as one sees in the outcome of Agamemnon’s letter, the failure
of either one of the registers leads to the miscarriage of the
very purpose of the letter altogether. As a result, when Menelaus
and Agamemnon are caught up in their fight over the breaking
of the letter’s seal and Agamemnon’s hesitance, Clytaemestra
and Iphigeneia arrive at Aulis without meeting the servant on
their way. In the case of the chorus of young foreign women,
we can observe specifically how the visual register reinforces
the aural register when the latter is largely absent. Had they
not heard of the Greek army camp already, they would not have
seen it with such great delight, for much pleasure lies in the
very act of confirming by seeing: They are “blushing
like [girls]” (IA 187) because they are “embarrassed by how
much [they] want to see the shields, the tents full of armor,
the throng of horses” (IA 188-91); for it was a “greedy pleasure
to fill [their] women’s eyes with looking” (IA 232-34).
The Chorus’ account serves as a gold standard of a reliable
report, since in the fictional framework of the tragedy, the
Chorus actually sees the Greek army before it recounts the experience
to the audience. However, more complexities will arise later
when the reporter of the event of paramount importance – the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia – has not actually seen it himself.
In this case, not only will the authenticity of the report be
called into question, but the credibility of the person reporting
will also be in doubt.
The “Seer’s” Report: Testimony and Credibility
The prophet Calchas in the Agamemnon enunciates his
interpretation of the two eagles devouring the pregnant hare,
in the same way as the Chorus quotes, in authoritative Homeric
hexameters (Ag. 126-55) with enigmatic undercurrents in his
words. Calchas interprets the omen as the Greeks’ capture of
Troy, explaining the inevitable sacrifice of Iphigeneia as a
supplication to goddess Artemis for favorable winds. By way
of comparison, the prophet in Iphigeneia at Aulis is
granted a much more vivid presence by the detailed narrations
of his actions, although he does not physically appear as a
character on stage. From the messenger’s report delivered to
Clytaemestra after the event, one learns that, at the end of
the play, Calchas has played the dominant role during the sacrifice:
MESSENGER
With his hand Calchas the seer placed in a golden basket
a sharp knife which he had drawn from its sheath,
and put a garland on the girl.
…
The priest grasped the knife, spoke a prayer,
and looked at the throat to see where he would strike.
(IA 1565-67; 1578-79)
His very own speech presents the evidence that the messenger
is reporting from his first-hand, visual experience throughout
and up to the moment just before Iphigeneia’s death. Among the
others involved in the sacrifice, Achilles takes the basket
and water and circles the altar (IA 1568-69) while speaking
a prayer to Artemis (IA 1570-76), and Talthybios demands a silence
among the army (IA 1563-64). Agamemnon, whose role Achilles
has taken on (IA 1472), stands among the Greek army at the altar
but never actually participates in the sacrifice, thus breaking
his earlier promise to Clytaemestra that he will “provide the
light which is appropriate for the couple” (IA 733).
Indeed, not only has Agamemnon not provided the light – such
as might have illuminated his, or our, vision – he has not seen
the sacrifice either: When the ritual begins, Agamemnon has
in fact turned away, covering his eyes with his cloak and shedding
tears (IA 1547-50) as the messenger reports. The whole army,
likewise, “stood looking at the ground” (IA 1577) during the
sacrifice. Thus, what we gain is that Calchas is both the priest
and also the “seer,” the highly suspect sacrificer and possibly
the sole actual witness to the death of Iphigeneia.
The messenger’s report of the sacrifice therefore comes almost
solely from what Calchas says – which comes in turn from what
he sees – during the sacrifice:
MESSENGER
Dear mistress, you willlearn everything clearly.
I’ll start from the beginning, unless my mixed-up
thoughts confuse my tongue as I speak...
The priest grasped the knife, spoke a prayer,
and looked at the throat to see where he would strike.
And pain, no small pain, came into my heart,
as I stood with my head bowed. Suddenly there was an incredible
sight!
Every single person could clearly hear the sound of the blow,
but no one saw where the girl fell to the ground.
The priest cried out, the whole army echoed him,
Seeing an unexpected sign from some god
which one can’t believe even if clearly seen.
A deer lay on the ground, gasping its life out,
very large, very beautiful to look at,
whose blood was raining all over the goddess’s altar. [….]
I was there, and I speak as one who saw the event:
your child has obviously flown away to the gods.
(IA 1540-42; 1578-89; 1607-08)
For example, the messenger reports that the priest cries out
at “seeing an unexpected sign from some god” (IA 1584-85). The
messenger also provides a direct quotation of Calchas as the
prophet sees, if he is to be trusted, a dying deer on the altar
replacing Iphigeneia at the critical moment of her death (IA
1591-1601). One cannot be certain, however, that Calchas has
honestly reported what he has seen during the sacrifice. Yet
more significant is our aforementioned problem that the messenger
also appears highly suspect: If indeed he “stood with [his]
head bowed” (IA 1581), how can he possibly “speak as one who
saw the event” (IA 1607), as the messenger mentions in his own
report? Still, even if one regards the previous utterance as
a mere metaphorical reference, or a desperate attempt to convince
Clytaemestra that Iphigeneia has indeed been rescued by the
goddess Artemis and deified, how can the messenger know that
there was “an incredible sight” (IA 1581) – an unequivocal
reference to his own vision, delivered as he is reporting to
Clytaemestra that in the aftermath of the sacrifice a deer instead
of the dead maiden is found “[lying] on the ground, gasping
its life out” (IA 1587)? And how is he supposed to know that
Calchas has placed a sharp knife in a golden basket (IA 1565-66),
that Achilles has taken the basket and water and circled the
altar (IA 1568-69), and that the priest has looked at the maiden’s
throat before he strikes (IA 1579), without ever witnessing
even one of these actions himself? How can he know that the
deer at the altar is “very large, very beautiful to look at”
(IA 1588), as he claims? What seems to clear up these questions,
in fact, comes from the report itself. The messenger’s repeated
use of direct quotations from Iphigeneia, Achilles, and Calchas
in his report reflects the aural nature of his sources: the
messenger has indeed only heard, not seen, the sacrifice.
Once we have fairly established this idea of the disassociation
of the visual and aural registers during the messenger’s speech,
we see that it resonates with one of the hallmark moments in
the Agamemnon analyzed by Degener. At the end of their
parodos in Aeschylus’ tragedy, the chorus of old men, who had
also been among the host at Aulis during the sacrifice, state
in an ambiguous phrase only recently identified by Degener that
What followed next – I did not see
they did not see [out’ eidon] – and I do not say.
(Ag. 238 trans. Degener)
The Greek verb eidon, “to see,” at once first person
singular and third person plural, refers simultaneously to the
host at Aulis and the audience – “I see” and “they see” – metatheatrically
(Degener 90). Thus, the assembly of sacrificers is blinded at
the moment of the sacrifice by Iphigeneia’s stigmatizing gaze,
the piteous missiles from her eyes (Ag. 240-41); simultaneously
the audience who is watching the tragedy in the theater is reminded
by the Chorus that naturally they do not see the sacrifice,
which is not acted out but only recounted as an event that occurred
in the past. The blow of this unseeable, unspeakable moment
to at least the enlightened members of the audience should not
be underestimated, especially when it is contrasted with the
convention that the quality of a drama is judged by its power
to lure the audience into the fictional reality and suspend
their disbelief. In such uncommon experience lies one of the
greatest profundities in Greek tragedies: in the end it is really
unclear whether anyone has witnessed the sacrifice in Agamemnon
at all. Aeschylus uses spoken words to reveal what is unseen;
through these words the audience’s vision acquires the power
to transcend what is visible on stage. For example, before the
sacrifice, the audience, led by the Chorus’ speech, envisions
the images of the thousand ships of the Argives (Ag.
46), the eagles circling in agony for their fledglings perished
(Ag. 48-54), and Calchas interpreting the portent of the two
eagles. As Degener points out, at this point, the very end,
of the Chorus’ extended aural recollection of past images, the
last scene of the sacrifice crystallizes silently and graphically
as a painting (Ag. 242) in which the audience witnesses
the blinding of the assembly by Iphigeneia’s outwardly striking
gaze. However, almost instantaneously the audience, too, finds
itself blinded, as the Chorus says, “they / I did not see, and
I do not say” (Degener 92). By forcefully suspending the image
he has painted in their minds, Aeschylus reminds his audience
that indeed “they did not see” because they were never actual
participants in the sacrifice. Waking up from their dramatic
trance, they are thus abruptly brought back to an awareness
of themselves.
The “Truth” of the Sacrifice
This hallmark moment of the blinding sacrifice in Aeschylus’
tragedy has prepared the Athenian audience for Euripides’ challenge.
Unlike the Chorus in Agamemnon, who are blinded only
at the moment of the sacrifice, the messenger in Iphigeneia
at Aulis, standing with his head bowed, has not witnessed
any part of the sacrifice at all. The audience of Euripides’
tragedy is thus “blinded” throughout the sacrifice as well,
being unable to “cast together” (sym-ballein) what
they have heard and seen, which come respectively and in isolated
manner from the messenger and the uncommunicative Calchas –
two disharmonious halves which do not join to form a coherent
whole. On the one hand, members of the audience “see” in their
minds Calchas conducting the ceremony at the altar that leads
to the sacrifice; on the other hand, they are told by the messenger,
their “eye” at the ceremony, that he has his head bowed. This
statement alludes directly to Aeschylus’ declaration, “they
did not see.” As a result, Clytaemestra and the audience apparently
do not “learn everything clearly” (IA 1540), as the messenger
suggests in the beginning of his report, about the sacrifice.
The messenger’s thoughts are indeed “mixed-up” (IA 1541) – a
situation that he somehow consciously acknowledges and therefore
tries to avoid, as he confesses in his speech, though without
success. As mentioned above, the messenger’s report is inconsistent
with his “blindness” and he is somehow “seeing,” or knowing,
more than he could have, as if his thoughts are “mixed-up” with
those of someone else, someone who has the power to see much
more than the messenger. It is as though some all-knowing observer
of the ceremony – as though Euripides – is speaking
to the audience through the messenger, thus “confusing” his
“tongue” as he speaks (IA 1542). Euripides is instead the one
who has “seen” Iphigeneia “both dead and alive” (IA 1612), if
one is to borrow the precise words from the messenger’s concluding
comments.
As noted above, Foley has suggested that it is rather Agamemnon
that is the “poet’s double” (94); yet from what we have developed
so far one finds much more similarity between the messenger’s
report and the lookout’s speech at the beginning of Agamemnon,
through which, Degener argues, Aeschylus addresses his audience
directly. The messenger’s monologue resembles an author’s narrative
when it unfolds the story conveniently in the voice of an omniscient
narrator. Nonetheless, the messenger does strive for his own
voice and existence when he shares with the queen his private
feelings of which, presumably, only he has possession: the “pain”
that “came into [his] heart” (IA 1580) on the brink of Iphigeneia’s
death. Yet taking into account the remark of his pain, it is
still doubtful whether the messenger, unlike the chorus of old
men in Agamemnon, is consciously aware of his own “blindness”
at all. After all, he has never actually seen, and therefore
has never possessed his vision at any point during the course
of the sacrifice. He cannot have lost what he has not possessed
in the first place. In other words, like the audience of Agamemnon,
he “sees” in his mind with the aid of others’ spoken descriptions;
however, unlike the audience, he is never reminded that in the
fictional “reality” “[he] did not see.” In this case it may
lead him to utter in an arguably honest manner that he “speak[s]
as one who saw the event.” To emphasize again, Euripides does
not provide any definitive evidence that Calchas has reported
all that he has seen to the messenger and Agamemnon. Even if
he has, the sign that he sees is one that “one can’t believe
even if clearly seen” (IA 1586), as the “blind” messenger remarks
on the appearance of the deer on the altar in his report to
the queen. Yet the exact appearance of the sign is now beside
the point; after hearing the report, the enlightened members
of Euripides’ audience will wake up from the dramatic trance
and realize upon introspection that those who claim to see are
merely projecting images from their own subjective imagination,
since it is impossible to make logical sense of the messenger’s
report at all. As Euripides forces in the name of the goddess
an ostensible reversal of the very artificial negation of Iphigeneia’s
presence, the tragedian puts forward a novel conscious self-reflection
by creating a void in his audience’s Dionysian trance where
coherent cognition collapses from within.
Where is Iphigeneia?
The audience’s search for what actually happened to Iphigeneia
signifies the quest for an enlightened self-awareness. At the
most pregnant moment of the play the “truth” – if it indeed
exists – of Iphigeneia’s death has been abducted, screened from
the unenlightened mind incapable of self-examination and camouflaged
by a mist of confused rumination. The abduction of narrative
at this most darkly fascinating moment in Aeschylus, or the
deliberately obfuscated accounts in Euripides, serves a precisely
targeted purpose, namely, to induce the birth of a full cognitive
awareness. In relation to the report of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia,
it should not go unnoticed that although scenes of violence
and killing are customarily never actually acted out on stage
but are always “exteriorized” (Blondell et al 452 n8) by a third
person, the reporters of this scene, like the messenger in Euripides’
Medea and Clytaemestra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon,
were conventionally, in earlier plays, credible witnesses or
even active participants in the event. Euripides thus exploits
this otherwise unsophisticated convention of Greek drama by
building upon its framework his own agenda of self-awareness,
which is brought about by the unseeing messenger. Men can no
longer trust what the gods or the prophets claim to witness.
Euripides strikes us during the sacrifice, as if saying, “Calchas
cannot see it for you! You have to see it yourselves!”
On Thin Ice, Approaching Awareness
It is thus by no means accidental that Calchas – the messenger
of the gods – is chosen to be the so-called “seer” during the
sacrifice. Unlike the other characters and the chorus of foreign
women who rejoice (IA 1613-14) after hearing the report of the
sacrifice, Clytaemestra remains unconvinced, She needs to speak
with Iphigeneia (IA 1616), who has both seen and heard the sacrifice.
She suspects the messenger’s and even Calchas’ oral reports,
refusing to believe in anything she has not witnessed herself.
As Dana Burgess points out, Clytaemestra exemplifies “the play’s
paradigm for incredulity” (42) in that she fully exhibits “the
impulse to refuse to see what she sees” (55) – Clytaemestra
sees that she does not see, acutely aware of her ignorance.
C. A. E. Luschnig takes this idea further and asserts that Clytaemestra
alone escapes the trap of self-delusion (108). Lushnig thus
argues that all the other characters are inevitably imprisoned
in their lies to themselves, refusing to see the death of Iphigeneia
as it is and embracing uncertainty as truth, either because
of the deliberate repulsion of unwelcome thoughts or indeed
the inaccessibility of truth.
The origin of their “tragedy” lies in their very lack of awareness
of the defect in their still unfolding cognition, their fatally
self-sealing ignorance. Those who are unknowing are seldom aware
of what they in fact do not know, for indeed the tragedian “speak[s]
most clearly to those who understand, but to those who do not
[he remains] concealed” (Ag. 38-39 trans. Degener).
As shown in the case of the other characters, this nescience
erects an invisible barrier to perfect knowledge that takes
both conscious effort and luck to overcome. Clytaemestra, though
walking on thin ice, is gradually approaching a heightened awareness
of the self. At the same time, it seems that until the evolution
of this new dimension of understanding we can not fairly evaluate
Iphigeneia’s death, which is hardly glorious but pathetic, as
Herbert Siegel argues. Her sudden willingness represents not
an ascension from her girlish to her heroic self, but rather,
as she fails altogether to reflect on the situation with her
own awareness, a blind surrender to a doubtful conviction from
Calchas which Agamemnon gratefully embraces. Achilles is likewise
incapable of recognizing the truth as he stubbornly refuses
to let go of his false marriage with Iphigeneia (IA 1410), even
though he is fully aware of the inevitability of her death,
having been almost stoned to death after a failed attempt to
rescue her (IA 1349-50). Unlike Clytaemestra, he simply cannot
resist “the strong closure of the eyes” (Ag. 15 trans.
Lattimore) and is hence unable to see through and break apart
the symbolon of the sacrifice and false marriage.
Still, Calchas remains the central focus of deliberation and
criticism in our understanding of self-awareness. Euripides
has more than once echoed Aeschylus’ undertones in Agamemnon
of the denouncement of Calchas’ duplicity, portrayed as the
false prophet (Degener 65, 77) and the “king of birds” (Ag.
114) who drives the Atridae to sacrificing Iphigeneia (Degener
66-67). In Iphigeneia at Aulis, Agamemnon and Menelaus,
serving as possible models that guide the audience on their
way to self-awareness, seem not entirely unenlightened as they
criticize Calchas as “worthless” and “consumed with self-interest,”
one who is “absolutely good for nothing” (IA 520-21). Having
learned of Agamemnon’s plan for the sacrifice, Achilles condemns
the prophet at greater length:
Calchas the prophet will get busy with his basins
and bitter barley-grains – but what kind of man is a
prophet?
Even when he gets lucky he tells a few true things along
with a lot of lies;
when he doesn’t get lucky, he leaves.
(IA 955-59)
In other words, Euripides asserts that Calchas is indeed a
false prophet. S. E. Lawrence has likewise come close to scrutinizing
Calchas’ motives in suggesting that alternate interpretations
to the conventional belief – that Artemis demands the sacrifice
– are plausible (91). For example, Lawrence suggests that the
unfavorable weather may have occurred naturally, or that Calchas
may be “in league with Odysseus inventing the supposed necessity
for the sacrifice in order to discredit Agamemnon when he refused
to authorize it” (91-92). This speculation does not appear groundless,
given the enmity between Calchas and Agamemnon that goes all
the way back to Homer’s Iliad. Yet more significant
is Lawrence’s inference that at the moment of Agamemnon’s decision
to kill, “the overall impression is one of human [original emphasis]
complications and human evil, whether in the form of superstition,
ignorance or sinister manipulation” (92). Therefore one cannot
help but suspect that Calchas indeed “tells a few true things
along with a lot of lies” during the sacrifice. And as Achilles
has so insightfully raised the question of “what kind of man
is a prophet,” one may even speculate whether Calchas has hypnotized
the crowd with his speech, leading the Greek army, including
the messenger, to believe that they actually see the event when
in fact they do not. Calchas has asked the crowd if they “see
the sacrifice which the goddess has placed on the altar” (IA
1592-93), a question that seems more reasonable when directed
to the seeing than to the blind. It follows logically that if
the messenger and Agamemnon are indeed unaware of their own
“blindness,” they will be prone to trust unquestioningly Calchas’
oral accounts. Lawrence also points out that although Agamemnon
recognizes Calchas as “worthless,” nonetheless, as in Aeschylus’
Agamemnon, he fails to impugn the seer’s accounts.
Hence Agamemnon and Achilles are at once alertly examining their
beliefs of the previously unchallenged authority of the prophet
yet miserably lost on the way to their conscious self-awareness,
plunging back into the abyss below as they fall through the
thin ice of self-reflection. In this regard, Euripides’ Agamemnon
seems more inspired than his counterpart in Aeschylus’ Oresteia,
who, contributing ultimately to his own death, fails to scrutinize
not only Calchas’ words (Degener 65-67) but also Clytaemestra’s
(Degener 81) as revealed in the true prophet Cassandra’s visions
(Ag. 1228-33).
Aeschylus emphasizes repeatedly the importance of seeing and
sight, as opposed to hearing and speech, to true understanding
in Agamemnon, a recurring theme that Euripides exploits.
For example, Cassandra urges the disbelieving Chorus not once
but twice to “see” (Ag. 1114, 1125) for themselves
the murder of Agamemnon. In response, the Chorus express their
incomprehension of Cassandra’s prophecies even more explicitly:
I am blind to these prophecies. The rest
I understood; the city is full of the sound of them.
(Ag. 1105-06 trans. Degener 77 and Lattimore)
It should not go unnoticed that the Chorus is blind
– not deaf – to Cassandra’s (spoken) prophecies, for
sight – not sound or speech – conveys the truth. The Chorus
understand the message that speech conveys, yet they appear
fully aware of their ignorance of the ultimate truth. By way
of comparison, at the moment of Agamemnon’s decision to sacrifice
his daughter in Iphigeneia at Aulis, Euripides echoes
the notion that sound and speech are potentially subject to
sophistry or even witchcraft. That Odysseus is the best speaker
among mortals who uses his power of speech to correct Agamemnon’s
mistake in the Iliad (Blondell et al. 462 n84) appears
as Agamemnon’s decisive reason to sacrifice Iphigeneia (IA 526-531).
He is the only person who may disclose to the masses Calchas’
prophecy and Agamemnon’s broken promise to sacrifice the maiden,
and the fact that he has command of the Greek army (IA 531-35)
makes him an even greater threat. The “craftiness” of Odysseus’
words (IA 525) – Agamemnon’s ultimate fear – alludes to the
intricacies of luxurious tapestry, one on which Agamemnon in
the Oresteia steps after failing to challenge Clytaemestra’s
seemingly weak (spoken) arguments, possibly having been hypnotized
by her words (Degener 91). The potentiality of speech as enchantment
is also echoed in Iphigeneia’s plea in Euripides’ play – that
if she had “Orpheus’ way with words” (IA 1211), she would have
charmed Agamemnon; but since she does not, she can only offer
her silent tears (IA 1215). In addition, in their first choral
ode (IA 164-302) the chorus of young foreign women extravagantly
express their great joy in seeing the Greek army camp that they
have always heard at home. Cassandra’s declaration of her prophecies
in the Agamemnon again reinforces the importance of
seeing uninterruptedly:
Well, then, my prophecies won’t peek again
like some shy newlywed from behind a veil.
No, they will blow clear as a fresh wind
toward sunrise, and surge like a wave against the new
light with a woe far greater than its shining.
No riddles anymore.
(Ag. 1178–83 [1349-54] trans. Burian/Shapiro)
Cassandra will see – and spell out – her thoughts transparently.
She has abandoned the riddles in her prophecies, unlike Calchas,
who speaks with a deliberate ambiguity that blurs the eyes.
Seeing truly requires a lifting of the veil, as Clytaemestra
does in the following speech that closely recalls Cassandra’s:
Then listen. I’m going to take the veil off my words.
No longer will I use hints and double meanings.
(IA 1146–47)
The similarities are, literally, striking. By opening her eyes,
Clytaemestra has thus broken apart the symbolon of
the sacrifice and false marriage that Agamemnon has cast together,
just as Cassandra has solved in her own prophecy the mysterious
relationship of the symbolon of the death of Agamemnon
and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia according to Calchas’ prophecy.
Their perspicacity guides the audience to a nascent enlightenment
of their own. In the wilderness of the abyssal void of our incomplete
self-consciousness we meet a penetrating gaze, casting forth
a reply to the dialogue opened half a century earlier in Agamemnon,
bearing together a tacit empathy with his master’s soul, that
there is indeed at least one person during his own time who
seeks to reflect the blinding radiance of the brilliant soul.
References
Blondell, Gamel, et al. Women on the Edge. New York: Routledge,
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Burgess, Dana L. “Lies and Convictions at Aulis.” Hermes: Zeitschrift
fur Klassische Philologie 132. (2004): 37–55.
Burian, Peter and Shapiro, Alan. The Oresteia. Oxford: Oxford
UP, 2003.
Degener, J. Michael. “The Cæsura of the in Aeschylus’
Agamemnon.” Arethusa 34 (2001): 61–95.
Degener, J. Michael. selection from the Agamemnon. Boston: Boston
University, 2004.
Green, David and Lattimore, Richmond. Oresteia. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1953.
Foley, Helen P. Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.
Lawrence, S. E. “Iphigenia at Aulis: Characterization and Psychology
in Euripides.” Ramus 17 (1988): 91–109.
Luschnig, C.A.E. Tragic Aporia: A Study of Euripides’ Iphigenia
at Aulis. Berwick: Aureal Publications, 1988.
Siegel, Herbert. “Self-Delusion and the Volte-Face of Iphigenia
in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis.” Hermes: Zeitschrift fur Klassische
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