Iphigenia

Was it worth it?

All of the fights, all of the pain, all of the sorrow?

Was it worth it, all of the blood spilled, the lives lost, and the cities that were felled to ashes?

The war had ended with the Achaean's victory, yet the ones who called themselves heroes had derived from such names, plundering and raping and burning the once impenetrable Troy.

Perhaps some of you will turn towards what happened after. Agamemnon, you say, his son had a happy ending, and his daughters, too. And you’re absolutely right. I do not deny the fact. Orestes and Electra and Chrysothemis do live on, and the Tantalean curse did not deprive them of the chance for a better life. But what of the fate of Agamemnon himself and the poor priestess Cassandra, who were murdered brutally by the hands of Clytemnestra and her lover?

Oh, come on, you sigh and find another hero. Odysseus will do! You clap your hands, certain that he did live on well. How can you say that he had a sad ending? He lived, his wife lived, and his children lived. Yet his soldiers and sailors were tossed in into the ocean, when they incurred the sea god Poseidon’s wrath. He himself borne a child with another woman, proceeding to leave her alone to raise the child herself. He assassinated dozens upon dozens of suitors to reunite with his wife, Penelope and his son Telemachus. Though the suitors were immoral, they were still human. Did he ever consider his own acts by spending nights with women other than his wife? He wasn’t the bearer of pain for those ten years—he was the bringer.

I speak directly to you, as the one who inadvertently launched the triremes to war and destruction. I did not foresee the people of my land to which I am bound disobeying the will of the gods, throwing themselves deep into the pit of madness. I had prayed daily for a decade long during that time, and I had kept praying until all was restored.

Millennia later, I now walk among them. The slaughtered, the abducted, the enslaved. I see Hector and Andromache together again, living out their second lives in peace in Elysium. Cassandra tells me she does not receive any more visions, and she is grateful for it. Patroclus is as he always is, his spirit glows faithfully, and sometimes especially bright when Achilles is by his side. Achilles still regrets his rage after so many years, and he believes he belongs to Asphodel, or even the deepest parts of Tartarus. We all tell him what he did matters not, but he only nods in return, his head dipped low. The rivalry between the two sides have long diminished since.

And what of Helen and Paris? You may ask. It is an enigma to us all, and I dare not answer. There are rumors, however: some that claim them suffering the most the realm of Hades offers; others speak of reincarnation, for their souls yearned to be together freely in the living world; but the one I like most is the goddess Aphrodite transforming them into two of her great doves that pull her chariot across the skies. Yet these speculations are just speculations, and they bear no truths to be deducted from.

From Glaucus, a grandson of Bellerophon, I quote, “Like the generation of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.” When Troy fell, Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite, sailed across the seas to found a new land. Then the land flourished, the kingdom overthrown, the republic established, and the empire rose. The ashes of Troy was scattered, but in place Rome and her glory burst from Aeneas and his crew.

As a priestess of Artemis, I have seen beyond the mundane and beyond the human perceptions. As a girl who was offered as a sacrifice unknowingly, I have recognized the cruelty of mankind the moment I glanced into the eyes of the priest holding the knife meant to draw the blood from my neck, the soul from my body.

Was it worth fighting the Trojan War to gain one woman back and some useless titles of glory in return for decades of years lost and the lives of countless men?

I do not believe so.

But I do believe it is worth the turn of a new page, a page of a book where we live a new story that no one else has ever known. A new beginning for us all.

I am Iphigenia, and after four thousand years, I am ready for my next adventure.

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A/N:

There have been different variations of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and this story takes on the version of Euripides’ play, Iphigenia at Aulis.