ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the theft of the cult image in Euripides’ Iphigeneia among the Taurians reflected contemporary Athenian attitudes toward the ritual use of cult images. At Athens, there is evidence for a fourth-century, ephebic procession that carried an image of Athena down to the sea. Traditionally, this procession has been assigned to either the Plynteria festival or to an unnamed occasion dealing with the theft of the image and the associated inauguration of a law-court. I propose that the return of the bretas of Artemis to Attica in Euripides reflected elements of this ephebic procession to Phaleron: a torch-lit procession to the sea, a mock battle, and a theft. Both the procession and the culminating scene of the IT were primarily concerned with dramatizing the status of non-citizen groups at Athens.
