[22]
On receipt of
this oracle, Agamemnon sent Ulysses and Talthybius to Clytaemnestra and asked for
Iphigenia, alleging a promise of his to give her to Achilles to wife in reward for his
military service. So Clytaemnestra sent her, and Agamemnon set her beside the altar, and
was about to slaughter her, when Artemis carried her off to the Taurians and
appointed her to be her priestess, substituting a deer for her at the altar; but some say
that Artemis made her immortal.1
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1 This account of the attempted sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis and the substitution of a doe agrees with the narrative of the same events in the epic Cypria as summarized by Proclus （Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19）. It is also in harmony with the tragedy of Euripides on the same subject. See Eur. IA 87ff.; Eur. IA 358ff.; Eur. IA 1541ff. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 183; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 1.108; Hyginus, Fab. 98; Ov. Met. 12.24-38; Dictys Cretensis i.19-22; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 6ff., 141 (First Vatican Mythographer 20; Second Vatican Mythographer 202). Some said that Iphigenia was turned by the goddess into a bear or a bull (Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 183). Dictys Cretensis dispenses with the intervention of Artemis to save Iphigenia; according to him it was Achilles who rescued the maiden from the altar and conveyed her away to the Scythian king.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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