Mystical Morality and Heroic Transcendence: Eleusinian Orphism and Political Ethics in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis

Abstract

Abstract: In this paper I shall argue that in Iphigenia at Aulis Euripides seeks to lay bare the utter incoherence of the idea that moral laws should remain silent and idle during wartime by deploying powerful mystical signals of great ethical moment, especially Eleusinian and Orphic major key signatures and codes. In this way, he trains the Athenian audience to engage more fully in the intricate process of plotting and anticipating the heroically induced denouement, while at the same time repeatedly asserting the value of political morality, and its refusal, as motive forces in the configuration of power relationships in democratic Athens in particular and in war-torn Greece in general.