• Iphigenia in Afghanistan:Notes on Women and War
• Paisley Rekdal (bio)

"Do not destroy me before my time, for it is sweet to look upon the light, and do not force me to visit scenes below," Iphigenia begs her father, Agamemnon, having learned that he plans to sacrifice her to Artemis. The Greek ships are assembled in Aulis's harbor but are unable to sail to Troy because Artemis refuses to let the sea winds blow. One of Agamemnon's men shot and killed the goddess's sacred deer, and for payment, Artemis has now demanded a sacrifice. The sacrifice must be a young virgin, and so Agamemnon has lured his teenage daughter Iphigenia to Aulis on the pretext that she will marry Achilles. Everyone knows there will be no marriage, of course: Euripides's play is about the capitulation to one's fate and duty, which is why Iphigenia—horrified at first by her father's plan—finally relents, urging her mother, Clytemnestra, to accept her death, cheered (if that is the word) that on her "the whole of [End Page 404] mighty Hellas looks; on [her] the passage over the sea depends; on [her] the sack of Troy."¹

I first read Euripides's play in college, where I was profoundly irritated by Iphigenia's low-grade filial whining. Now I see I missed something. When I read the play again today, Iphigenia no longer appears as a wilting teen who relents to her father out of selfsacrificing misogyny. I see instead a cannier girl, one who rebuffs her mother's despair and Achilles's offers of help, which Iphigenia knows will only lead to more violence among the Greeks. "All this deliverance will my death insure, and my fame for setting Hellas free will be a happy one," she insists instead to the crowd of soldiers that gape at her, stunned by her declaration. Iphigenia doesn't just consent; she claims agency through her self-sacrifice, declaring that the Greeks' future victory at Troy will also be hers, the war overwritten with her own image.

In poems of war, we look first to the narratives of male soldiers, but Iphigenia reminds me that the costs and even authorship of battle are more complexly shared. Those who begin and end the story of Troy's fall with the Iliad forget the ways that Iphigenia's sacrifice both initiates the war and also casts a moral shadow over its legacy. This is something my high school Latin teacher tried to teach me the afternoon she played Michael Cacoyannis's movie Iphigenia for my senior class, how particularly enraptured she'd been by the performance of Irene Papas, who played Clytemnestra. My teacher freeze-framed the video to point out the black stare Papas shot at the Greek boats as they pulled away from Aulis's shores. "You know what comes next," my teacher said, turning to us with a raised eyebrow. I didn't. Euripides's play ends on Agamemnon wishing his [End Page 405] wife well, telling Clytemnestra that as parents "they may be counted happy," as Iphigenia now lives among the gods and goddesses. But in college I would read Aeschylus's Oresteia, which picks up where Iphigenia in Aulis and the Iliad drop off, centering on Clytemnestra's plot to murder Agamemnon in part for revenge for her daughter. And after that, their son Orestes will later not only kill his mother in order to avenge Agamemnon's murder but be tormented by the furies for it. Iphigenia in Aulis is but one moment in a complicated and brutal unfurling of war that extends from Mycenae to Troy then back again to Greece. The war abroad begets the war at home: there is no end to what Iphigenia accepts and initiates in Aulis.

When I first began thinking about this essay, I'd imagined portraying Iphigenia as one of the many female victims of war—a nubile girl slaughtered to satisfy an army's blood lust—but I see it's more nuanced if I read Iphigenia's self-sacrifice as a way of allying herself with and also claiming her father's martial project. Though...

• 阿富汗的Iphigenia：关于妇女与战争的注意事项
• 佩斯利·雷克达尔（生物）

伊菲格妮娅乞求她的父亲阿伽门农（Agamemnon），得知他计划将她献给阿耳emi弥斯后，“不要在我的时间之前就毁了我，因为它看起来很甜美，不要强迫我参观下面的场景。” 希腊船只在奥利斯的港口集结，但由于阿耳emi弥斯拒绝放风，因此无法航行至特洛伊。阿伽门农的一个人开枪打死了女神的圣鹿，阿耳emi弥斯要求赔偿，以赔偿。牺牲一定是年轻的处女，因此阿伽门农以借嫁阿基里斯为借口，将他十几岁的女儿伊菲格妮娅引诱给奥利斯。所有人当然都知道不会有婚姻：欧里庇得斯的戏剧是屈服于自己的命运和责任，这就是为什么伊菲真妮亚（Iphigenia）最初因父亲的计划而感到恐惧，但最终还是松了一口气，[完第404页]海拉斯威武无比；海上通道取决于；在她的特洛伊麻袋上。” ¹

我首先在大学读过Euripides的剧本，在那儿，我对Iphigenia的低级孝顺抱怨深感不安。现在我看到我错过了一些东西。当我今天再次读到该剧时，伊菲基尼娅不再像个枯萎的少年，出于自我牺牲的厌食症而屈服于她的父亲。我看到的是一个食人女孩，一个女孩拒绝母亲的绝望和阿喀琉斯的帮助，伊菲格尼亚知道，这只会导致希腊人更多的暴力行为。她坚持说：“所有这些拯救将确保我的死亡，而我让海拉获得自由的名声将是一件快乐的事。” Iphigenia不仅同意。她通过自我牺牲宣称自己有代理权，宣布希腊人在特洛伊的未来胜利也将是她的，

在战争诗中，我们首先看男性士兵的叙事，但伊菲基尼娅提醒我，战斗的成本甚至著作权的分配更为复杂。那些开始和结束特洛伊与伊利亚特（Iliad）陷落的故事的人们忘记了伊菲根尼娅（Iphigenia）的牺牲既引发了战争，也给战争的遗留下了道德阴影。这是我的中学拉丁老师在教迈克尔·卡科扬尼斯（Michael Cacoyannis）的电影《伊菲真妮亚》（Iphigenia）的下午试图教我的对于我的高年级学生来说，扮演Clytemnestra的Irene Papas的表演让她特别着迷。我的老师定格了视频，指出当黑人船驶离奥利斯海岸时，黑色凝视的帕帕斯对希腊船只开枪。我的老师说：“你知道接下来会发生什么。”他扬起眉毛转向我们。我没有 欧里庇得斯的剧情在阿伽门农（Agamemnon）祝他的妻子[第405页]圆满结束，他告诉克吕泰涅斯特拉（Clytemnestra），作为父母，“他们也许算幸福”，因为伊菲根尼娅现在生活在众神和女神之中。但是在大学里，我会读埃斯库罗斯（Aeschylus）的《Oresteia》，该书在Aulis和Iliad的Iphigenia取了以克吕泰涅斯特拉（Clytemnestra）谋杀阿伽门农（Agamemnon）的阴谋为中心，这部分是为了报仇她的女儿。此后，他们的儿子奥雷斯特斯（Orestes）稍后不仅会杀害母亲，以报复阿伽门农的谋杀案，而且还会为此受到愤怒的折磨。奥利斯的Iphigenia只是一场复杂而残酷的战争的片刻，这场战争从迈锡尼延伸到特洛伊，然后又回到希腊。国外战争在国内引发了战争：Iphigenia在Aulis接受和发动的战争永无止境。

当我刚开始考虑这篇文章时，我曾想像将伊菲真尼亚描述为战争的众多女性受害者之一-一个为了满足军队的血腥欲望而被屠杀的幼稚女孩-但如果我看过伊菲真尼亚的自我牺牲，我会觉得这更加细微。一种与自己结盟并声称自己父亲的军事计划的方式。尽管...