IPHIGENEIA, daughter of Agamemnon (q.v.) ; not men tioned in Homer, but by some absurdly identified with the Iphi anassa of II. ix, 145, who was alive and well some ten years after Iphigeneia's supposed death. As she is constantly represented as connected in some way with Artemis, and as Iphigeneia ("mightily born," i.e., "great princess") is a title of the goddess; as, moreover, she has substituted for her one of Artemis' beasts (see below), it is in no way impossible that originally she was a by-form of the goddess herself ; but the question is obscure. Agamemnon had vowed to sacrifice to Artemis the fairest thing that should be born in a certain year, meaning the handsomest beast; but in that year Iphigeneia was born. Another story is that he or Menelaus had offended Artemis in some way. As a result, Artemis stayed the Greek fleet at Aulis on its way to Troy, by calm or contrary winds, and Calchas discovered that only the sacrifice of Iphigeneia would appease the goddess. Iphigeneia therefore was sent for on pretence of marrying her to Achilles; at the last moment the goddess relented and substituted a hind, bear, or bull for the victim, whom she spirited away to the land of the Tauri (Crimea). Here she became priestess of Artemis
and as such had to sacrifice all strangers. At last Orestes (q.v.) and Pylades arrived; by a stratagem, she fled with them taking the image of Artemis, which Orestes had been sent to fetch. They left it somewhere in Greece; among places claiming to have the true statue and some remnant of the old rites of human sacrifice were Brauron in Attica, where a pretence was made of cutting a man's throat before the goddess, and Sparta, where boys were beaten till the blood came, in the ritual of Artemis Orthia.
Iphigeneia was variously said to have died and been buried at Brauron or Megara, and to have been transported to Leuce, where she was wedded to Achilles, or even to have been trans formed into the goddess Hecate (q.v.).
See Stoll in Roscher's Lexikon (bibl.) ; L. R. Farnell Greek Hero Cults (1921) ; H. J. Rose Handbook of Greek Mythology (1928).