In Tauris

After the trial of Orest in Athens, some Erinyes did not want to accept the decision of the court and hunted Orest all around driving him insane again. So again he went to see the Oracle of Delphi, that this time told him that if he wanted to get rid of his torment, he had go to Tauris to recover and bring back to Greece a divine image of Artemis, Apollo’s sister, who had fallen down from heaven and was kept in the temple there. Orest immediately armed a ship , gathered a couple of strong youngsters and his loyal friend Pylades, and left to Tauris.

The Temple was not far from the coast to which they arrived, but it was said that all the foreigners that stepped on this coast got sacrificed. And although they tried to hide, a shepherd discovered them and they were captured by the king Thaos, who brought them to the temple and left them alone with the priestess.

Amazingly, they found out that the priestess was Orest’s sister Iphigenia, who was once taken to this temple when the Goddess Artemis saved her from being sacrificed by her father Agamemnon.

When the brother and sister recognized each other, they held each other in their arms full of joy and thought of a plan to run away stealing the image. The sister had an idea. She told the king that the strangers were not clean enough to be offered to the Gods so she would bring them to the sea in order to clean them. Besides, they had touched the image of Artemis and made it also dirty, so she would also take it with her to clean it before making the sacrifice. This way they managed to get to the sea, where they were able to escape after a hard fight with the guards of the ship.

Finally, this time there was a happy ending for the story, since although the persecutors asked the Gods for help, these were on Orests side and Athena halted the enemies because in fact it was them who instigated Orest to steal the image. When the team arrived back to Mycenae after this adventure, Pylades married Electra and got the throne of Phocis, and Orest the one of Mycenae.