Iphigeneia [‘Strong-Born’] is not a goddess, but a princess of epic story, although not in Homer. Yet a princess who is constantly in association with a goddess as victim, protegée, or priestess; whose name is a title of that goddess, as Hesychios and Pausanias assure us; and who is variously stated to have had substituted for her a hind, a bear, or a bull, all creatures associated with Artemis, can hardly complain if she is suspected of being herself no other than the deity in question.
Her well-known legend runs, with little variation, as follows. She was a daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimestra. Her father, or her uncle Menelaos, generally the former, had offended Artemis, by boasting that he was a better hunter than she, or by killing a deer sacred to her. Hence, when the great expedition against Troy assembled at Aulis, Artemis caused contrary winds or none at all to blow, and prevented it sailing. Kalchas the seer was consulted, and announced that Artemis must be appeased by the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter. Iphigeneia was therefore fetched from home under pretence of being married to Achilles, and the sacrifice was about to be made when the goddess relented, snatched Iphigeneia away, and put a hind in her place. According to post-Homeric legend, Achilleus, who knew nothing about Agamemnon’s deceptive luring of Klytaimnestra and Iphigeneia to Aulis on the pretext of the latter’s betrothal to him until it had succeeded, was furious with Agamemnon when he learned of it, and supposedly this previous episode of discord between the two men was part of the reason for Achilleus’ very short temper when latter the further problem of Chryseis and Briseis arose between them, as described in Iliad Book One.
There was another version, presumably Attic, according to which the sacrifice took place not at Aulis, but at Brauron in Attica, and the substitute was a bear. This legend clearly is due to the very curious and ancient cult of Artemis at that place, where a dance was performed in her honour by girls who were called bears and wore saffron robes, possibly a substitute for the tawny hide of the beast. Other variants are that a bull or a calf was substituted, or that Iphigeneia was turned into an old woman.
Thus rescued, she was carried off by Artemis to the land of the Tauroi, in the Scythian Chersonese, i.e., the Crimea. Here she became priestess of the goddess, who was worshipped there in savage fashion, all strangers being sacrificed to her. Iphigeneia held this hateful office for some years, until at last her brother Orestes, after the latter had slain their mother Klytaim(n)estra, came there to expiate his blood-guilt by carrying off the image of Artemis to more civilized surroundings. He was taken prisoner by the natives, and handed over to Iphigeneia to sacrifice, along with his constant friend Pylades. But by some accident Iphigeneia recognized her brother, and so by stratagem or by divine intervention she and the two friends escaped from the Tauroi and made their way back to Greece.