Iphigeneia and others: Virgin Sacrifices in Ancient Greece

Iphigeneia was sacrificed to Artemis to enable the Greeks to sail to Troy. Other virgins were also sacrificed for the good of their community in other myths, only one male, a volunteer like some girls – others were coerced. Some were killed at a deity's altar like Iphigeneia in some of the versions in which she dies – she does not die in all –, others are sacrificed metaphorically: they give their life to save their city. Historical Greeks did not practise human sacrifice, which for them was an exceptionally practised rite of the heroic past. Why did they construct myths in which it was almost exclusively girls who were sacrificed? To modern eyes this would seem to reflect a perception of woman as victim, and of a maiden's life being of less value than a youth's. But I will argue that in Greek eyes these myths expressed much more complex perceptions, and that they became a locus for the problematization of a variety of (religious and more generally ideological) issues.