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1 " for everyone the nature of the waiting had changed, because it was known that the wind would not cease— could not cease—until Iphigeneia came. The wind itself had a different voice now, it was sighing or groaning or screaming for Iphigeneia to come. She occupied the thoughts and dreams of a thousand men, few of whom had actually seen her. Her face and body were imagined with intensity as the men lay through the nights of the growing moon; they saw her white throat, bared for the knife; and they felt the rigid blade, and the stabbing urge, in their own restless loins. "
― Barry Unsworth , The Songs of the Kings
2 " Odysseus enjoyed the intellectual stimulus these encounters with the King provided. On the one hand there was the desire for power and loot, on the other the deliberate killing of an innocent. If you softened the first by mixing in notions of public service, the need for living space and wider markets to serve a growing population, and submerged the second in the heavy burden of command, the problem ceased to exist, they became the same thing, they blended into a single notion of painful duty. How Agamemnon loved it, this painful duty, how he drank it in, how it soothed him. Therapy, really. Of course, after a while things started to slide apart again, and the King became confused and sometimes gasped for air; then some further restoration work was required. "
3 " Do you really think it is we who decide? If so, you are out of touch with reality. The whole army is waiting for Iphigeneia. They have seen the knife made, they have labored to erect the altar and make the processional way. The one thing that has kept them going, kept them cheerful and joking among themselves, is the prospect of this colorful and unusual spectacle, a king’s daughter on the slab. They may believe this will bring an end to the wind, but that is an abstract matter. It is the prospect of the show itself that has held them together, given them something to look forward to. They are only human, they have to have some color and excitement in their lives. If we cheat them out of it now, we’ll have a full-scale mutiny on our hands. No, let’s face it, if we want to save our own skins, she’ll have to be sacrificed now. "
