The tragic situation of the House of Atreus, the ruling house of Mycenae, and the saga of the Trojan War, two of the great streams of Greek legend, intersect in the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon. He does this to change the winds, thereby allowing for the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. This event is referred to in five Greek tragedies (all three plays of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, and the Electras of both Sophocles and Euripides) and serves as the main event in another tragedy (Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis), and as the back-story in another (Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians). In addition, this sacrifice is cited by the Roman author, Lucretius, as an example of the perverse deeds people commit in the name of religion. It is one of the key moments in Greek mythology.
As related by Barry Unsworth, the sacrifice of Iphigenia has less to do with religion than it does with political machinations and the way perceptions can be manipulated through rumor and song. When the Greek fleet is held up at Aulis by bad winds, an explanation is sought (the gods are angry and must be placated). Attempts to sway public opinion by Odysseus and Chasimenos (a scribe in the house of Agamemnon) go awry when someone forgets his story and adlibs – what was meant as a sign of victory guaranteed at Troy (an eagle swoops down and snares a hare) becomes instead the cause of Greek troubles (an eagle swoops down and snares a hare pregnant with young). Once uttered and spread among the camp, the altered story becomes the official one, and a means of placating the supposedly angry gods must be found. The man who must solve the problem of the winds must also somehow be the cause of heaven’s anger, and so Agamemnon unwillingly becomes the fall guy, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia is ordered as a remedy.
In this account, the two main figures are Calchas, the Asian prophet who has risen to the position of chief prophet for Agamemnon, and Sisipyla, the Asian slave woman and companion of Iphigenia. Both are outsiders, and so remain apart from the Greek propaganda machine. Though Calchas can be wrong in his prophecies (and a couple of instances are provided), he seems a man of great devotion to Apollo, and a man of great intuitive ability. He is also most resistant to the propaganda machine, but is unable to convince even his own slave that the songs sung by the singer are not “truth,” but rather what the majority want to believe, or need to believe, and that the beauty of the song can be used to sway the majority into believing what the rulers desire. As a prophet to Apollo (seen as a new and Eastern god), he is regarded with suspicion by many of the Greeks, though his position remains high with Agamemnon. In trying to explain the complexity of the situation (even Calchas buys the story of the eagle and the pregnant hare, concocted by Odysseus and Chasimenos, but messed up by one of their cronies), he is outdone by Croton, a prophet and priest of Zeus. Croton’s position as advocate and interpreter for Zeus puts him on a higher plane than Calchas, as Zeus is the chief god of the Greeks. His simple (and simplistic) explanations carry the day, for people are more interested in the simplicity of “sound bites” than in difficult and convoluted explanations.
Though Odysseus and Chasimenos are successful in framing the problem of the wind in such a way that Iphigenia will be sacrificed, and the Greek fleet will sail for Troy (instead of disbanding), they are foolish in thinking they can master every event. Odysseus notes of Calchas that he will always be surprised by events, whereas Odysseus sees events and their interpretation as malleable – he can change the account by suggestion or bribery to priests like Croton, or men like the singer, or by spreading rumor. In the end, though, the vision Calchas has of the tremendous cost in human life of the Trojan War while on an island off the coast of Aulis will prove to be true. Though successful at Troy, the war’s expense in human and material resources will result in the downfall of the Mycenaean world. Unable to see such trouble, or believe that he cannot manage it, Odysseus, the great master of political spin, walks willingly into a doom of his own making.
For the Trojan War, as this novel suggests, wasn’t about Helen; it wasn’t about enforcing Zeus’ rules for guest/host relations; it wasn’t about love. Troy was a rich city and the guardian of trade routes to the East, a means of great wealth for the Greeks. The story about Helen was merely a pretext, put forth by the prophets and the singers, who turned a venal expedition into a noble enterprise. All the Greek leaders, except Menelaus himself, knew this. Menelaus was ugly and overweight, and Helen clearly left him for the much more appealing Paris and the wealthy life of Troy. Even so, they would use the image-making machine at their disposal to recast the story (Paris abducted Helen, and the war was all about getting her back). Only Calchas seems aware of Odysseus’ deeper motivation in all this. King of Ithaca, a small rocky island, of little wealth or strategic importance, Odysseus was eager to get at the wealth Troy afforded. Perhaps he imagined he would become king of some wealthy city in Asia. Though this should have been obvious to the other Greeks, only Calchas seems to notice it. He doesn’t tell anyone, though, because he senses he would not be believed, and in the prophecy game, belief is important.
Back in Mycenae, it is again the outsider, Sisipyla, who remains skeptical. When news comes from Aulis that Iphigenia is to come at once to marry Achilles, the young girl is all caught up in romantic illusions of Achilles’ great love for her, a love that couldn’t wait. Sisipyla knows that there could be no such love, for they had met but once, and there would be no need for haste now. But the illusion of love, and the hope that marriage to Achilles will help to undo the curse of the House of Atreus, prove overwhelming for the young girl. Even Clytemnestra, Iphigenia’s mom, takes the account at face value. A shrewder and more political woman, she may not be swayed by the idea that love is behind the offer, but the opportunity to make such an alliance is not to be ignored. For Achilles is of noble heritage (his mother is said to be a sea nymph, and his father one of the heroes of the Argonaut expedition) and a “copper magnate” besides [the use of this term is anachronistic, as is Menelaus’ use of the word “Bolshie” to describe some lower class troublemaker – but there aren’t too many of these jarring anachronisms].
As the story builds, and Iphigenia gets closer, the suspense builds in the reader, as the anticipation builds among the Greeks. What we learn is that the story, once accepted, determines how everything will be viewed. Calchas observes the importance of words:
Words were what was needed now, words and more words. Words would take the life of Iphigenia before ever she set out from Mycenae, long before the knife touched her throat, and the words that would kill the daughter, the same words, would swaddle the father, make a warm wrapping for him.(p. 130)
This sentiment is echoed later in the narrative, when the winds stop just before Iphigenia is to arrive. Some, like Idomeneus, argue for setting sail at once, and forgetting about the sacrifice; perhaps the winds had nothing to do with divine anger. That suggestion is put down, because the men have been got ready for this act. They have spent time preparing the altar, preparing the road to the altar. Some have even been injured in the construction. The singer has been preparing the men by including an update on Iphigenia’s voyage to Aulis in every song. At this point, they expect to see a sacrifice carried out, and so the decision to continue as planned is made. Even Iphigenia is convinced of the need for her own death. Though Sisipyla explains to her the power of story and how the tellers manipulate the emotions and beliefs of their listeners, and seems to convince her that her death is unneeded, still Iphigenia goes. For she has a sense that to go is her destiny, and slaves like Sisipyla do not have a destiny.
For the whole thing comes down to story and its power. In arguing for the need to go ahead with the sacrifice, someone notes that “not the truth or the lie but the belief, the readiness, that is what pleases Zeus.” (p. 294) And when Calchas wonders what version is believed in the end, he concludes that “it is the stories told by the strong, the songs of the kings, that are believed in the end.” (p. 296) When we first meet the singer (he is never named, which may be appropriate as it is his position, rather than his personality that is important), he tells stories of the Argonauts, of Perseus, and of Hercules, stories of the past, but throughout the narrative, he is convinced, through suggestion, or bribery, or even his own belief, to include recent events. He maintains, of course, that it the story that dictates the situation, never he personally. And he protests when Odysseus or others try to bribe him into including some piece of propaganda into his songs – still he does it. He includes updates of Iphigenia’s impending arrival, with a day-to-day report on where she is. He prepares the army for the sacrifice by including the wind situation in his songs of old heroes, and by suggesting the gods’ anger with the Greeks. When an Athenian tries to steal from Achilles and is brought to trial, he is found guilty. Though the whole affair is a tawdry one, and Achilles is very much a vengeful brute, thinking nothing of killing a man who has robbed him rather than exacting another penalty, in the singer’s hands, Achilles becomes a noble warrior defending himself against a vicious traitor – the murder weapon described in great and loving detail. The dagger which had been stolen, and then used to take vengeance, was then given to the singer as payment for a favorable version of the story (Odysseus suggested this to Achilles), the one that would become the official version.
As people who live in a world of mass media, but where that media is controlled by a very few, and those few have corporate interests that keep them from pursuing damaging stories, Unsworth’s recasting of the Iphigenia story is a valuable reminder of the dangers of mindless belief, of just how pernicious and perfidious propaganda works its way into our daily lives. The power of such spin as we see daily can be seen best by the two outsiders, Calchas and Sisipyla, who are not swayed by it, but cannot convince even those close to them that there is a gap between truth and story. So all encompassing is the image machine that it is easier to accept the image than dig behind it. For to do that would be to cast all our beliefs, the sum of which we see ourselves to be, into doubt, and then who or where would we be. Calchas, though he cannot be swayed by the image, feels deeply the exclusion from the army’s trust and the king’s favor. He is emotionally crushed. Only Sisipyla escapes somewhat unscathed, and even she has lost her close friend. Sisipyla too is coopted by the story – disguised as Iphigenia (for she almost convinced Iphigenia to allow her to take the Mycenaean girl’s place at the sacrifice – they looked remarkably alike and were in costume), she makes her escape, but is spotted by some – the story then spreads that Iphigenia was not sacrificed, that the goddess accepted the offer of her sacrifice, and then whisked her away to safety (the back-story of Iphigenia Among the Taurians). Such a story made the murder of an innocent girl seem the more palatable – she wasn’t killed, she didn’t die, but Agamemnon showed himself, like Abraham in the Old Testament, to be a devout man, ready to give up his child to the gods.