A second important point of difference between the Homeric story and that of the _Agamemnon_ is the reference in the latter story to the ‘sacrifice of Iphigeneia,’ the daughter of Agamemnon, at the hands of her father, at Aulis, and the interpretation of this act, by Clytaemnestra, as a justification for the death which she inflicted on Agamemnon. It would take us too far afield if we attempted to explain, at this stage, the origin of the story of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. England gives an excellent account of this difficult problem in his edition of the _Iphigenia Taurica_ of Euripides,[18] and we shall recur to this topic when we come to deal with that play. The following points, however, may here be briefly indicated: (1) The ‘sacrifice’ of the daughter of Agamemnon to Artemis at Aulis would certainly have been referred to by Homer if it had been an historical fact, or even if the poet had heard a rumour of such a strange event. (2) This sacrifice, which is used as a ‘plea’ by Clytaemnestra, and which is a well-established element in the Oresteian legends of Attic tragedy, could hardly have been the invention of Aeschylus, for it tends to diminish the guilt of the villains of the drama, Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, and it is far too complex a story to be attributed to the invention of a single mind. The confusion of the Homeric word Iphianassa with Iphigeneia, which was merely a cultus-epithet of the goddess Artemis, the invention of a mock human sacrifice at Aulis which was suggested by a sham rite of human sacrifice at a temple of Artemis in the Attic coast town of Halae, and the translation of Iphigeneia to a Tauric temple of Artemis, where Orestes was said to have interviewed his sister—all these facts suggest, we think, the ‘ecclesiastical’ origin of the story. (3) The doctrine of the ancestral curse would not have mediated the identification of Iphigeneia with Iphianassa. According to this doctrine the death of Agamemnon was a natural result of the curse of Thyestes. But the sacrificial death of Iphigeneia cannot naturally be connected with such a curse. (4) The Attic legend which regarded Orestes as justified by Apollo cannot be supposed to have contributed to the genesis of the Iphigeneia story. It is not probable that such a legend, which conceived Clytaemnestra as a murderess and an adulteress, would have also presented her as the heroic avenger of an act of sacrificial bloodshed which was performed in obedience to a divine command.