Background and Preliminaries

• Produced 405 B.C., after Euripides' death in 406
• The contemporary military situation
• The Iphigenia at Aulis (405 B.C.), like the Philoctetes (409 B.C.), seems to reflect the increasing despair as it becomes clear that Athens will lose the generation-long conflict with Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, which lasted from 431 to 404 BC!
• A decisive turning point in the war was the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, which has many elements seemingly alluded to in this play
• Deception of officials: When the expedition to attack and conquer part of Sicily (including the city of Syracuse) is proposed, the Sicilian allies deceive the Athenians by pretending to great wealth when in fact they were poor: thus a famous story is told of how, when the Athenian officials were visiting, these allies gathered all the gold and silver cups and plates together, and as the officials were being dined at now one house, now another, the same gold and silver tableware was moved about, so as to make it look as though all the prominent citizens were extraordinarily wealthy
• Greed leading to war: In anticipation of the great loot that would be gotten from the military expedition, the Athenians put together an absurdly large fleet (of 40,000 men!) for such a minor campaign, and a tremendous number of merchants were involved in the outfitting and the expedition itself, in hope of sharing in the profits from the looting. The tremendous size of the fleet in turn caused the Spartans to send a force under Gylippus to counter the Athenians, and this will be what leads to the downfall of the Athenian expedition.
• Timidity and wrong decisions by the generals in deference to the mob: the Athenian general Nicias, in particular, vacillates, and refuses to act independently: at a critical juncture, when he could have terminated the campaign and sailed home with almost all his men and equipment intact, and when he knew well that all was endangered, he refused to act until he heard what the assembly in Athens (the "mob"!) commanded him to do; the delay while he waited for that response allowed Gylippus to get his forces into place and led to disaster.
• Importance of a divine sign: Once the Athenians realized that their entire army was in danger, they prepared to abandon the campaign. But that night an eclipse over a full moon persuaded them that the gods were not in favor of their departure: the men (the "mob"!) demanded of the generals that they stay for "three times nine days," as the seers decreed. The lead general, Nicias, agreed, even though he knew the military situation was perilous. This final delay was critical in allowing the Syracusans with their Spartan allies to get the forces into place so as to destroy the Athenians.
• The destruction of the Athenian force. The Spartans and Syracusans attack the Athenian fleet in the narrow harbor, and in the fierce battle the Athenian fleet is badly damaged, the harbor is blocked, and escape by sea now becomes impossible. The Athenians now try to escape overland with their force of 40,000 men, running in heavy armor with the enemy hot on their heels. In a striking, indeed haunting, passage the Athenian historian Thucydides describes the sad collapse of the Athenian military expedition:
•     "The Athenians pushed on to the Assinarus river, all the while being devastated by the spears, arrows and stones coming from everywhere and by the hordes of cavlry and other troops. They thought that if they could just get across the river, things would be a little easier for them. They were desperate to stop the pain, to drink some water. When they got to the river, they broke ranks and ran into it, every man struggling to make the brutal crossing first as the enemy bore down. Driven to cross all together, they fell onto one another and trampled each other down. Some were killed immediately by their own spears; others got tanlged up in their equipment and with each other and sank into the river. Syracusans positioned on the other bank, which was steep, hruled down spears at the Athenians, most of whom were jumbled together ravenously drinking from the nearly dry riverbe. The Peloponnesians went down into the river after them and did most of the killing there; and though it quickly became fouled, the Athenians nonetheless fought among themselves to gulp the muddy water clotted with blood.

    "Finally, with dead bodies heaped atop each other in the riverbed, and the army decimated, some in the river and others-- such as got across-- by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered himself to Gylippus, trusting him more than the Syracusans. He told Gylippus and the Spartans to do with him what they wanted, but to stop slaughtering his men. After this, Gylippus ordered his troops to take prisoners...." [trans. W. Blanco]
• Ironically, as Thucydides also tells us, the thousands of Athenians, imprisoned in a huge rock quarry, sang songs from Euripides to try to pass time in the torturous period that followed.
• Structure of the play is odd, formally
• postponed prologue: the other plays of Euripides start with a formal prologue that introduces the background to the action, but this play starts with a dialogue, to which is appended a speech by Agamemnon that reads very like a prologue
• early agon: the agon is usually towards the middle of a Greek tragedy, but here the agon between Agamemnon and Menelaus occurs very early in the play, as though to signal that this will not be the only conflict-- and indeed the speeches between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra later in the play constitute, in effect, a second agon

The Perversion of the Norm: quintessentially Euripidean
 

• Marriage
• Peleus and Thetis: ultimately leads to the Trojan War: glory for Achilles, death for Iphigenia
• Paris and Helen (a "marriage", p. 280): a symbol of violation
• Achilles and Iphigenia: an emblem of falseness
• Sacrifice to the gods
• through association with Iphigenia, this turns into an image which is thoroughly impious (!), and gruesome: e.g. study the effect of lines 1270ff.
• Leadership
• study the figure of Agamemnon, the king of kings, in the opening scene, esp. lines 21ff: what is considered judgement is perverted into an image of indecisiveness
• The obedient, pious, patriotic woman
• Iphigenia is, decidedly, all this, but that hardly carries with it positive associations: what is the effect for the following examples:
• lines 289ff
• lines 1418ff
• Following the will of the gods: the problem of fatedness
• 878: the oracle becomes the demon!
• cf. 1034ff

The Cacoyannis Film

• Agamemnon, as depicted here by Euripides
• Menelaus, ditto
• Clytemnestra, ditto
• Odysseus, ditto (not, strictly a character, since he does not appear in the play-- only in the film!)
• Iphigenia
• Mycenae (=Argos, in the play)
• Aulis