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118 Brother and sister are now made manifest to each other. The priestess is the long-lost Iphigenia: the stranger is the brother whom she had held an infant in her arms, and whom she was mourning as dead. The method by which Æschylus and Sophocles bring about the discovery is consistent with their sublimer genius; that which Euripides adopts is equally consonant with his more human temperament, no less than with his views of dramatic art.

The deliverance of the friends and the priestess is still hard to accomplish; they are begirt with peril. Iphigenia knows too well the religious rigour of the Taurian king. Thoas is a devout worshipper of Diana; is an inexorable foe to Greeks. His subjects and his guards are equally hostile towards strangers and loyal to their goddess. If they cannot escape, the intruders will be immolated, and the priestess be a third victim on the blood-stained altar. And now Iphigenia proves that she is Greek to the core. She can plot craftily: she will even hazard the wrath of a deity by a timely fraud. King Thoas, little more than a simple country gentleman, dividing his time between field-sports and ceremonies sacred or civil, is no match for three wily Greeks. "The statue of Diana," she tells him, "must be taken down to the beach and purified by the sea; the two strangers, before they are sacrificed, must undergo lustration." "Take the caitiffs by all means," he says, "to the shore. A guard must attend you, for they are stalwart knaves; one of them has murdered his mother, and the other prompted and allotted him in that foul