Orestes did not escape the persecution of the Erinyes. Not all of them obeyed the decision of the Areopagus. Some of them still pursued Orestes, giving him no rest day or night. Finally, exhausted by suffering, Orestes again fled to Delphi to the sanctuary of Apollo. There Apollo ordered him to go to distant Tauris and bring from there the sacred image of the goddess Artemis. This was a dangerous feat. The Tauri tribe, who lived in Tauris, sacrificed all the foreigners who came to them in front of this image. A similar fate could have befallen Orestes.
Nevertheless, Orestes set off on a long journey. Orestes wanted to get rid of the persecution of the Erinyes at any cost. After a happy voyage, he and his friend Pylades arrived in Tauris and, hiding his ship among the coastal rocks, went to the temple of Artemis. Orestes did not even suspect that the priestess in this temple was his sister Iphigenia, whom the Greeks once wanted to sacrifice to the goddess Artemis. Orestes and Pylades did not dare to steal the image of Artemis during the day and began to wait for night to fall. But the shepherds saw them, attacked them and, after a long struggle, tied them up and brought them to the king. The king decided that both of them should be sacrificed to Artemis.
In the morning they were led bound to the temple. Iphigenia, suspecting nothing, was supposed to kill her brother with her own hand. At night, she had a terrible dream that her father’s palace had collapsed due to an earthquake, and only one column remained, from which blond curls were descending, and she washed the column, as if preparing to sacrifice it. Iphigenia decided that her brother Orestes had died, and she decided to make a sacrifice in honor of her deceased brother. During the sacrifice, the king's servants brought Orestes and Pylades bound to her. She began to ask them who they were and where they were from. Having learned that they were Greeks, she asked them about the fate of Agamemnon and brother Orestes. Orestes and Pylades could tell a little joyful story.
Finally, Iphigenia decided to sacrifice only one of the young men, and send the other with a letter to Orestes in Greece, so that Orestes would know that his sister Iphigenia was alive. It was only then that it was discovered that brother and sister had met. Orestes and Iphigenia were delighted at their meeting. But how could they escape? How to escape from Taurida?
Iphigenia decided to resort to deception. She announced to the king of the Tauris that the statue of Artemis had been desecrated and it was necessary to wash both it and the sacrifices to the goddess, two foreigners, in the sea. The king of the Taurians agreed to this.
In a solemn procession, Iphigenia went with the maidens of the temple to the seashore to the place where Orestes’ ship was hidden. The servants carried the image of Artemis, and the king's servants led the bound Orestes and Pylades. Arriving at the seashore, Iphigenia ordered the king’s servants to leave, since they were not supposed to see the secret rituals of ablution. When the servants left, Iphigenia freed her brother and his faithful friend and hurried with them to the ship. It seemed suspicious to the king’s servants that the ritual was taking so long. They went to the shore and, to their surprise, saw there a ship on which Orestes wanted to take Iphigenia away. The king's servants rushed to Orestes to take their priestess away from him. The battle began, but Orestes and Pylades put the royal servants to flight. Orestes with Iphigenia and his companions boarded the ship. The rowers sat down on the oars and went out into the open sea. But they were not destined to leave Taurida so easily.
A terrible storm arose and washed the ship again to the shore. All the Greeks on the ship would have died, falling into the power of the king of the Tauri, if the goddess Pallas Athena had not come to their aid. She, appearing to the king of the Tauri, ordered him to release to Greece not only Iphigenia, her brother and all their companions, but even all the servants of the temple of Artemis. The king submitted to the will of the goddess. Now Iphigenia could return to her homeland, from where the goddess Artemis had once transported her to the Tauri.
Orestes' return voyage was happy. Returning to his homeland, he killed the son of Aegisthus, Aletos, who seized the throne in his absence. To his faithful friend Pylades, who was ready to die for him in Tauris under the sacrificial knife of Iphigenia, Orestes gave his sister Electra as his wife. Iphigenia became a priestess of the goddess Artemis in a temple built on the seashore in Attica, near Athens.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru