Euripides

Iphigeneia in Aulis and Three Other Plays: Iphigeneia in Tauris, Elektra, and Hekabe - Euripides

The plays in this volume are entirely about women and the dismal lives men had forced them to live.

Iphigeneia is brought to Artemis' sacrificial altar at Aulis because of a hubris committed by her father in Iphigeneia in Aulis as the revenge-aroused Greeks prepare to sail for Troy. In Iphigeneia in Tauris, she is saved by Artemis the very last second before her throat is cut - only to be brought to Tauris, where she herself will serve as a priestess of human sacrifices in Artemis' temple.

Elektra is the only victim of another woman - her own mother, Klytaemestra - who had killed Agamemnon, her father. So, she now waits for her younger brother, Orestes, to arrive and revenge this murder.

Hekabe - the queen of a once mighty city, Troy, and the wife of a once mighty man, King Priam - is now but a wretched, pitiful figure, thanks to the hordes of Achaian men driven there by a lust for glory. Her daughter Polyxene has been sacrificed at the altar of the dead Achilles and her youngest son was killed by someone who was supposed to have been a trusted friend.