Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0195017366, Hardcover)

1915. Murray, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford has translated The Iphigenia in Tauris into English rhyming verse with explanatory notes. The play is not in the modern sense a tragedy, it is a romantic drama, beginning in a tragic atmosphere and moving through perils and escapes to a happy end. The story tells of Iphigenia who is sacrificed by her father to the goddess Artemis. At the last moment she is saved from death by Artemis, but is then set down in the land of Tauri to be her priestess, where all strangers cast on their shores are sacrificed in a savage ritual. Iphigenia, obedient to her goddess, and held by the spell of the altar, had to consecrate the victims, all of whom were Barbarians, as they went to be slaughtered. She waited in half in horror and half in revenge to sacrifice a Greek. When one arrives, it turns out to be her brother Orestes, although she doesn't know this at first. The recognition scene between Iphigenia and Orestes became a model to Aristotle. While not of the same order as Euripides' The Trojan Women, Iphigenia is a delightful play. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.