[26]
When he inquired how he should be rid of his disorder, the god answered that he would be
rid of it if he should fetch the wooden image that was in the land of the Taurians.1 Now the Taurians are a
part of the Scythians, who murder strangers2 and throw them into the sacred fire, which was in
the precinct, being wafted up from Hades through a certain rock.3
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 As to the oracle, compare Eur. IT 77-92; Eur. IT 970-978; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1374; Hyginus, Fab. 120.
2 The Taurians inhabited the Crimea. As to their custom of sacrificing castaways and strangers, see Hdt. 4.103; Eur. IT 34-41; Diod. 4.44.7; Paus. 1.43.1; Orphica, Argon. 1075ff., ed Abel; Ovid, Ex Ponto iii.2.45-58; Mela ii.11; Ammianus Marcellinus xxii.8.34. According to Herodotus, these Taurians sacrificed human beings to a Virgin Goddess, whom they identified with Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. The victims were shipwrecked persons and any Greeks on whom they could lay hands. They were slaughtered by being knocked on the head with a club, after which their heads were set up on stakes and their bodies thrown down a precipice into the sea or buried in the ground; for reports differed in regard to the disposal of the corpses, though all agreed as to the setting of the heads on stakes. Ammianus Marcellinus says that the native name of the goddess was Orsiloche.
3 This account of the disposal of the bodies of the victims is based on
Compare“ Ὀρέστης
τάφος δὲ ποῖος δέξεταί μ᾽, ὅταν θάνω;
Ἰφιγένεια
πῦρ ἱερὸν ἔνδον χάσμα τ᾽ εὐρωπὸν πέτρας.
”
Thus Apollodorus differs from the account which Herodotus gives of the disposal of the bodies. See the preceding note.“ h)/dh tw=n ce/nwn kath/rcato,
a)du/tois t' e)n a(gnoi=s sw=ma la/mpontai puri/;
”
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.