Ion

“O happy slavery! ‘Tis well,

Lord Phoebus, at thy door to dwell

And bow before thine oracle.

No task to mortal man I ply

Of service, but to One on high

And deathless…” (Lines 128-133)

These lines appear in Ion’s opening monologue. After remarking on the glorious dawning of the day (an event made possible by the sun-god Apollo), Ion comments on how happy he is to be working in the temple precinct. “Phoebus” (ancient Greek for “bright” or “radiant”) is an epithet for Apollo. Ion considers himself fortunate and blessed to live in Delphi, the seat of the ancient oracle, Apollo’s mouthpiece. These lines reveal the extent of Ion’s reverence for the god and establish the framework in which the plot’s first conflict emerges: Ion does not want to leave his vocation to join his alleged father Xuthus in Athens.

“Ah, look this way; Look!

’Tis the Snake of Lerna, shorn

Of her heads by a golden hook.

’Tis He, the Alcmêna-born!

Here, darling, turn thine eyes.

I see.—And to help him hies,

With a fire-brand in his hold…

Is it he of whom they told

Those stories beside my loom?

Armed Iolaüs, long in use

To share always with the Son of Zeus

The Labours of his doom?

Ah, and look yonder too.

Yonder, a wondrous deed;

’Tis one on a wingèd steed

Quelling that awful thing

Three-formed, fire-vomiting.

All round I turn my view.”

This quote features the chorus’s visual account of the sculpture at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Though archeological remains occasionally shed light on the architectural features of ancient temples, literature, too, helps historians reconstruct ancient landscapes. The testimony here in Euripides’s play is one such attestation to ancient architecture. Temples to Greek gods (like the famous Parthenon in Athens) featured detailed sculptures surrounding the roof in an area called the pediment. This so-called “pedimental sculpture” features Hercules in his labor of slaying the Lernaean Hydra. It also shows Iolaus, Hercules’s nephew, helping him in his labors. Also depicted is the winged-horse Pegasus (“wingèd steed”), whom the hero Bellerophon rode when he killed the Chimera.

“What nobleness! Thy bearing is a sign,

Thou unknown woman, of a lordly line.

How oft in human kind one glance can trace

By look and bearing a man’s noble race.

Lady, what thoughts have touched thee, or what fears?

Here, at the god’s pure Temple, which to see

Makes all men glad, thou weepest silently.”

Before formally meeting Creusa, Ion remarks on her noble appearance. In the modern world, we recognize looks as a superficial quality of one’s being unrelated to their character. Such was not the case in the ancient world, which associated appearance with essential qualities. Thus, it is not unreasonable that Ion can distinguish Creusa’s nobility (her father Erechtheus is king of Athens) in the absence of certain knowledge of it.

“No man on earth would ask that question. No;

’Twould be at his own altar-fire to show

The god unrighteous. He would surely smite

A questioner who so misused his right.

Forget thy quest, lady.”

Ion discourages Creusa from besmirching the god Apollo in his own temple. These lines are spoken in response to Creusa’s wish to know the whereabouts of the infant her friend allegedly abandoned in a cave. Ion’s reply, spoken in his capacity as temple servant, highlights both the dramatic irony that Ion himself is Creusa and Apollo’s son and the paradox that the gods, despite their flaws, are to never to be insulted.

“Fair youth, I see mine honoured lord, who there

Approacheth from Trophonius’ caverned lair.

Prithee, no word of this our colloquy.

‘Twould shame me thus to have my secret plea

Discovered; and the matter might be wrought

Further, to issues other than I thought.

Ah, hard to tread are woman’s ways with men;

The true confounded with the false, and then

All hated! We are born but to be cursed.”

Creusa asks Ion to keep the story of her friend’s rape by Apollo a secret from Xuthus (“mine honoured lord”). Because Creusa’s story of her friend’s illegitimate child is in fact a thinly veiled story of her own circumstances, the audience can understand why she would wish to keep it a secret. These lines thus enhance the existing dramatic irony. The closing lament is a familiar trope in ancient literature: that the lot of women is inferior to that of men. Though others consider such a claim an anachronistic analysis, lines like these have led some scholars to consider Euripides a proto-feminist playwright.

“The word of Phoebus he would not forestall,

But this he said; that from this journey now

I shall return not childless… no, nor thou!”

Xuthus speaks these words to Creusa when she asks him what answer he retrieved at the shrine of Trophonius (a demigod and sponsor of another of the ancient world’s famous oracles). The cave of Trophonius was in Boeotia (another region of Greece), and within the cave was a shrine from which the oracle of Trophonius spoke. The prophecy allotted to Xuthus is characteristically ambiguous; the inscrutability of oracles is a major theme both in this play and in antiquity more generally. This prophecy is quite representative of the generic ancient prophecy, which gives a message with information that is either incomplete or misleading. Here specifically, the oracle does not announce how Xuthus and Creusa will procure this child, nor by whom the child was conceived. The audience’s interest in the play is in specifically watching the prophecy play out.

“Yet, if among the princes of the state

I claim to sit, shall I not earn much hate

Of the weaker folk? All power breeds jealousy.

Besides, many good men, who well might be

Wise leaders, hold their peace and seek no rule

Nor office; such as they would call me fool

And vain, lacking the wisdom to stand clear

Of conflict in a city racked with fear.

Others there are with famous names, who play

Great parts in the land’s guidance; will not they,

The more I rise in power, the keenlier throw

Their voice against me? Sure, ’tis always so;

Those who rule cities, counted patriots great,

Keep for their rivals their most lively hate.”

Ion expresses his misgivings about going to Athens, as well as the reasons for them. A self-effacing character, Ion acknowledges that he is not ethnically Athenian, and as Athens is home to many illustrious citizens (another nod to the Athenian audience), Ion fears being ostracized there. He is all the more reluctant because he is the heir apparent to the Athenian throne (via Creusa’s family), though Xuthus himself is non-native. These lines bespeak the prevalent self-righteousness (even xenophobia) among ancient Athenians.

“Well, I will go. In this high fortune yet

Is one thing lacking. If I am ne’er to get

Nearer to her who bare me… there is naught

In life to live for! To speak all my thought,

Most would I pray it were a woman born

In Athens were my mother. Then no scorn

Were on me from her side, and speech were free.

If in a true-bred land one alien be,

Whate’er the laws may say, his tongue is still

A slave’s tongue. He can speak not what he will.”

Ion privately comments on the frustration and remorse that stems from his ignorance of his mother. Though he has discovered his father, he is not yet aware of his mother’s identity. Ion has also just discovered that he is heir to the throne of Athens, such that he will never want for anything in his life. Still, he claims to wish for nothing else than to know his mother, placing supreme importance on the role of the mother in Greek society (as classical Athens was known for its propriety and social refinement). Finally, the irony that Creusa (the noblest woman in Athens) is his biological mother remains apparent to the audience.

“Ye ridges of Parnassus, ye

Who guard the crest, the rocky height,

Where Bacchus in high revelry

His torches tosseth, leaping light

Amid the Maids of Mystery,

His dancers in the deep midnight;

Let not that alien youth to my

Belovèd City find his way.”

These lines take the form of the epode (from the Greek for “sung after”), which constitutes the third and final choral section within each choral song. An epode is distinguished from the other two sections for using an anapestic meter (anapests are long-short-short feet), which sounds more like a song. In this chanted section, the chorus invokes maenads (maidens who initiate and perform the festive rites of the god Dionysus) to prevent Ion’s arrival in Athens by means of death. Dionysus’s female worshippers are the appropriate figures to invoke; in antiquity there was a noted tension between Dionysus and Apollo. Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1872 treatise on dramatic theory, Birth of Tragedy, suggests that tragedy was in fact born of the conflict between Dionysus (god of revelry) and Apollo (god of reason).

“We have been betrayed! We, for your wrongs are mine,

Mistress. Your husband by a thought-out line

Of outrage seeks to abuse and cast us out

From old Erechtheus’ house. I speak without

Hate against him, only with love for you.

’Tis plain. He had no right of birth, but through

Marriage with you he planned to make his own

Your house, your heritage, your crown and throne,

While on another woman, safely hid,

Getting a secret son. ’Twas thus he did.”

These lines are spoken by the slave. All middle- and upper-class families in classical Athens had slaves, either personal ones or ones attending to the family. These slaves were devoutly attached to their owners and were considered members of the family, quite unlike the circumstances of slaves of the tragic North American history. These lines showcase the extent of Creusa’s slave’s dedication to her. Specifically, he expresses his shared anger at Xuthus for having sired an illegitimate child who was raised in secret.

“But now, what? What revenge doth best beseem

A woman? Take a sword? Think of a scheme?

A poison? Something swift to slay those two,

Father and son, ere they bring death to you?

To falter now is to give up your life.”

These lines, also spoken by Creusa’s slave, exhibit the play’s most concentrated and momentous portion of the rising action. Specifically, they espouse the possibility that Creusa may attempt to kill her own son—an act as unspeakable in antiquity as it would be today. The prospect of such an action would have reminded Euripides’s audience of his earlier tragedy, Medea, in which the titular character hangs her children to exact revenge on her former husband.

“No, by the heaven’s all-starrèd zone,

By her upon the Rock, our own

Athena; yea, and by the shore

Of Triton’s Lake, her holiest—

That hour of shame shall now no more

Lie hidden! I will clear my breast

Of secrets and at last have rest.

Mine eyes with tears are brimming o’er,

My whole soul sick with misery,

A victim of cold malice I,

From man, from god—a god now proved

A traitor, false to her he loved!”

Creusa threatens to expose the crime that Apollo committed against her. While this solution might seem logical to the modern reader, the ancient Greeks were uniformly endowed with sensibility that prevented any public denunciation of the gods. As such, Creusa’s threat to expose Apollo as a “traitor” would strike the audience as alarming and suggest severe consequences for Creusa, who is inspired to speak these lines because she now has nothing to lose.

“Out in the sun, I now

Blaspheme thee, I name thee, Thou

My lover and my betrayer!

Who now to my husband, one

Who has suffered naught for thee,

Hast given a son, not mine,

My great house to possess;

But my son, mine own,

And thine, false father! thine,

Uncradled, motherless,

Out to the vultures tossed

As carrion! Lost! Lost!”

Creusa finally and publicly disavows Apollo. She admits that he is the father of her child and decries him for abandoning his son. Such an act would have been unthinkable to a Greek audience, especially in Athens, a city lauded for its upright citizenry. Thus, this denunciation reveals Creusa’s utter despondency.

“To work then! Take this jewel from my hand,

Athena’s gift, wrought work of ancient gold.

Go where my husband, hid from me, will hold

His treacherous feast; then, when the meats are o’er,

Wait till they stand in readiness to pour

Libations; then have this drop treasured up

Unseen, and slip it in the young man’s cup—

Only in his, none other’s, his alone

Who plotteth to usurp my house and throne.

Let this once pass his lips, he ne’er shall tread

Athenian soil, but stay in Delphi—dead!”

Creusa gives strict instructions for how her slave should kill Ion. Creusa has given her slave a jewel full of Gorgon blood that brings instant death. Euripides also employs poison in Medea, where the heroine gives a poisoned robe to her former husband’s new royal bride. Poison also became a fixture of Shakespearean tragedy, employed in both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.

“But if that death be unaccomplishèd,

Her will denied, and the hour for striking fled,

If the last hope whereby

She is upborne, pass by,

What more hath Fate in keeping but the red

Sword, or taut noose, till in one pang her strife

Cease, and away to other forms of life

She pass;”

These are the chorus’s lines as they await the results of the slave’s fatal errand. The chorus notes that Creusa would have nothing to live for were it not for this mission. Additionally, these lines foreshadow the actual failure of the mission and invite the audience to consider whether Creusa’s own life is in fact in danger.

“Alas, ye minstrels that forever press

Your evil-sounding songs of woman’s love,

The love exceeding law and holiness

That Cypris wotteth of,

Behold how far in honour we outrange

Man’s faithless matings.”

This quote is fairly self-referential; the chorus invokes “minstrels” (sometimes translated as “bards”) to change the theme of their songs from one that scorns women’s love affairs to one that recognizes man’s faithless role in such affairs. Lines like these display a mark of protofeminism in Euripides’s plays. “Cypris” is a moniker for Aphrodite, who is occasionally called “Cyprian” as an allusion to her birthplace, the island of Cyprus.

“First, for the roof, a wing of broideries

He spread, a gift that Heracles, Jove’s son

To Phoebus gave, spoils of the Amazon,

With symbols woven of Ouranos on high

And all the assembled wonders of the sky.

The sun toward the fading west his car

Drove, and behind him drew the evening star.

Then Night, black-robèd, on her traceless pair

Wheeled, with a train of stars about her chair.

Then up the mid sky moved the starry Dove

With sword-begirt Orion, and, above,

Revolving Arctos with his tail of gold.”

These lines describe the tapestry used as a tent at the banquet that Xuthus holds in Ion’s honor. Such an extended description of a physical object is called ekphrasis (Greek for “speaking out”). Ekphrasis was a rhetorical device that specifically involved describing a visual object with the written word. Here, the messenger describes the tapestry as depicting various constellations, Phoebus Apollo driving his sun chariot, and the female personification of the night. The constellations include the huntsman Orion and Ursa Major (arktos is Greek for “bear”). Other famous ekphrastic descriptions in antiquity include the shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad.

“The lad being temple-trained, true to his role,

Feared the bad sign and bade them bring a bowl

Of untouched wine; meantime out on the floor

He poured his draught and bade the others pour.

So all stood silent, while we filled those fine

Beakers with water pure and Byblian wine.

While this was doing, in there burst a flight

Of sudden pigeons, such as dwell of right

In Phoebus’ house, and where the wine lay spilled

The dry beaks dipped and the soft throats were filled.

Harmless was that libation to the rest,

But one, which lighted where the birthday guest

Had poured his, while she there her pleasure took…

A-sudden all that feathery form was shook,

And widly leapt and screamed with a strange cry

Incomprehensible.”

These lines explain how the murder plot was discovered: another slave saw the wine being poured and, having been raised among important people whose lives he was trained to protect, insisted on dumping the first glasses served in case they were poisoned. As luck would have it, a flock of birds flew in and drank the wine poured to the ground. The bird who drank from Ion’s poisoned drink died instantly. This revelatory scene, though it happens offstage (as violence often does in Greek tragedy), serves as the climax of the play.

“O holy land, Erechtheus’ daughter, she

An alien here, hath sought to murder me.

The rulers then decreed with one accord,

Seeing she had slain the servant of the Lord

Of Delphi, and with blood the sanctuary

Defiled, our mistress shall be stoned and die.

Now all the city is set forth to find

That woman, on a blind road wandering blind,

Who came to Phoebus for a child to pray,

And now child, life and all hath cast away.”

These are Ion’s words, reported to Creusa at the close of the messenger’s speech. She is thus incriminated publicly (before the lords at Delphi) and by her own son specifically. The characters, of course, remain unaware that Creusa is Ion’s birth mother, though the audience’s awareness of this fact contributes to dramatic irony and also heightens the audience’s empathy for Creusa herself.

“Unhappy Queen, what suffering still

Waits thee; me also; come it must!

Who sought to do their neighbour ill

That ill shall suffer; ’tis but just.”

These lines from the chorus reveal the equanimity and self-effacement of the handmaidens. Not only do they collectively assume responsibility for Creusa’s fate, but they also assume a portion of the blame for the conspiracy against Ion. Insofar as the chorus, by means of a dialogue with Creusa, helped invent the treachery, they here claim that they deserve death.

“Nay, not the altar, not Apollo’s shrine

Shall save thee. ‘Mercy’ wilt thou cry? Not thine

The right to mercy. Mercy is for me

And her, that Mother whom I ne’er may see.

Trick after trick! See what the wretch hath done

To escape us, cowering at the altar stone!

She thinks to evade all justice for her sin.”

In hot pursuit of Creusa for her attempt on his life, Ion sees that she has taken refuge at the altar of Apollo. He remarks at the irony that mercy is reserved for people who deserve it. There is also strongly evident irony that he alludes to his birth mother deserving mercy, because Creusa is in fact his biological mother.

“That thou wilt judge. ’Twas by His will divine

I reared thee, child; and back to thee I give

These vestures which He willed me to receive

And keep, unbidden. Why He willed it so

I know not. That I have kept them none could know,

These long years; none their hiding place could tell.

And now, child, with a mother’s love, farewell!”

The Pythia explains that even she is unaware of why Apollo had her preserve Ion’s crib. Only now, according to the priestess, it is Apollo’s express wish that the cradle and the accessories within be revealed to the boy, so he might search for his birth mother.

“O child, O light more lovely than the Sun—

The god forgive me!—I hold thee here, my own,

Found, found, the unhoped for! I thought thee afar, without breath

Below, ‘mid the tribes of the lost, with the Mother of Death.”

These lines evidence Creusa’s utter joy at finally recognizing Ion for who he is: her son. By this point, Ion likewise believes that Creusa is his mother, as she has successfully identified the items left in his cradle when he was a baby. Also in these lines is a reconciliation of Creusa’s ire against Apollo, thus sparing her further reprisals from the god.