The
following will show how the universal element in _Iphigenia_, for
instance, may be viewed: A certain maiden having been offered in
sacrifice, and spirited away from her sacrificers into another land,
where the custom was to sacrifice all strangers to the Goddess, she
was made there the priestess of this rite. Long after that the brother
of the priestess happened to come; the fact, however, of the oracle
having for a certain reason bidden him go thither, and his object in
going, are outside the Plot of the play. On his coming he was
arrested, and about to be sacrificed, when he revealed who he
was--either as Euripides puts it, or (as suggested by Polyidus) by the
not improbable exclamation, 'So I too am doomed to be sacrificed, as
my sister was'; and the disclosure led to his salvation. This done,
the next thing, after the proper names have been fixed as a basis for
the story, is to work i.e.isodes or accessory incidents. One must
mind, however, that the episodes are appropriate, like the fit of
madness in Orestes, which led to his arrest, and the purifying, which
brought about his salvation.
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