Subjectivity and the Pattern of Reversal in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis
In response to Aristotle’s well known criticism of Iphigenia’s anômalia (Poetics
1454a32-33), a number of scholars have situated Iphigenia’s sudden volte-face in the context of a
broader pattern of reversals in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis (henceforth IA) (Mellert-Hoffman
1969: 80-89; Knox 1979: 243-46; Chant 1986; Luschnig 1988: 21-36 and 105-9; Griffin 1990:
148; Sorum 1992: 528; Gibert 1995: 250-52; Schenker 1999: 648-49; Burgess 2004). Thus, it is
now generally acknowledged that, although Iphigenia’s willing self-immolation occurs quickly
and unexpectedly, her change of mind is nevertheless of a piece with other characters’ alterations
over the course of the play. However, the specific pattern of these reversals has gone relatively
unexplored, as have the political questions raised by Iphigenia’s active adoption of the Achaean
army’s demand for her sacrifice. The aim of this presentation, then, will be to illuminate the
pattern that governs change of mind in IA, and then to read Iphigenia’s departure from this
pattern in a politically meaningful way. Iphigenia, I will argue, provides a crucial but troubling
model of political subjectivity in response to the malicious popular authority wielded by the
Achaean force at Aulis.
It has, to my knowledge, gone unnoticed that each of IA’s speaking elites experiences two
changes of mind in response to the army’s sacrificial imperative. Agamemnon, Menelaus,
Clytemnestra, Achilles and Iphigenia all make an initial move to outright opposition to the
sacrifice, and all subsequently acquiesce to Iphigenia’s death and the pursuit of the Trojan
expedition. This sequential pattern of opposition and acquiescence occurs as a consistent
response to the political authority of the Achaean army and its elite representatives (Odysseus
and Calchas). However, in contrast to the other characters’ grudging resignation to parthenic
sacrifice, Iphigenia’s exuberant Opfertod (Schreiber 1968) both aligns her with the army’s
