Iphigenia

In Greek mythology, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; and the sister of Orestes. On the advice of the prophet Calchas, she was sacrificed by her father at Aulis to appease the goddess Artemis, and secure favourable winds for the Greek fleet sailing against Troy. According to some accounts, Artemis saved her.

After the sacrifice Iphigenia had gone to her father willingly, believing she was to marry the hero Achilles, but at the moment of death Artemis substituted a hind, bear, or bull, and carried her to Tauris (the Crimea), where she became a priestess in the temple of Artemis. One of her duties was to sacrifice strangers, but when her brother Orestes and his companion Pylades, son of King Strophius of Phocis, arrived on a quest for the statue of Artemis (as atonement for the murder of Clytemnestra), she escaped with them, taking the goddess's image. Iphigenia died either at Brauron or Megara in Attica, and in one tradition was transported to the island of Leuce, where she married Achilles. The Greek dramatist Euripides portrayed her story in Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris.