44 pages • 1 hour read
Ed. John C. Gilbert, EuripidesIon
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Lines 1250-1622Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Lines 1250-1622 Summary: “Exodus”
Creusa enters the stage, aware that she is an enemy of the state. She claims that she has run to them from the house where the banquet was held to escape her pursuers. She asks the chorus where she might hide; they respond that she should approach the altar before the temple of Apollo, since it is against sacred law to kill a supplicant. Following this wise counsel, Creusa clings to the altar, in which lie ashes from a recently burned dedication.
As Ion approaches Creusa, she begs him to spare her life on account of her presence at the altar. Ion questions the utility of a religious law that was intended to protect innocent people, not the guilty. He wonders why such a law was ever established. Ion also accuses Creusa of duplicitousness for taking refuge at the altar of a god whose son she tried to poison. Creusa retorts that Ion is now Xuthus’s son, not Apollo’s, and that Xuthus and Ion were positioning to take over Athens from her noble ancestors. Ion rejects this accusation, disavowing any attempt at usurping the Athenian throne while also commenting that Xuthus earned his place in Athens due to his triumphs.
Ion resolves to kill Creusa despite her presence at the altar, and Creusa states that Apollo deserves the insult of having a supplicant die at his altar, as Apollo brought Creusa ample pain.
Suddenly, the Pythian priestess appears. She gives Ion the cradle that his birth mother left him in. The priestess explains that Apollo instructed her to keep it hidden for many years, though she knows not why. She tells Ion to use the cradle to find his birth mother.
Ion, grateful and shocked, cannot believe that the cradle shows no sign of wear. Creusa immediately recognizes it as the one in which she laid her abandoned son so many years ago. Ion initially silences Creusa, disbelieving her story.
Creusa explains that there is a piece of weaving in the cradle. Ion looks within the cradle and is incredulous to see that she is right. Still suspicious, he asks Creusa to describe more of the crib’s contents. She adds that there is a necklace made of snakes, a token of Athens’s first snake-king, Cecrops. Finally, she also describes a sacred olive branch crown with evergreen leaves, plucked from the first tree planted by Athena herself in the city of Athens.
Ion confesses that he never imagined that Creusa was his mother, but nevertheless he embraces her and kisses her. Creusa is tremendously relieved that the infant she imagined dead has survived to adulthood. She celebrates the fact that her race (the royal race of her father, Erechtheus) will not die off.
Ion assumes that Xuthus is his father, as he was led to believe this by Xuthus himself (according to the Delphic oracle’s prophecy of Apollo). Creusa admits that he was born of another. Ion at first assumes (and laments) that he was born out of wedlock, as a product of her infidelity. Creusa reveals that it was Apollo who raped her in Athens when she was a young girl; 10 months later, Creusa left their son in a cave, assuming he would die. Ion interjects that he very nearly killed Creusa. She comments that fate is capricious. She hopes for less volatile fortunes for both of them in the future. The chorus leader remarks that their story is a testament to how dramatic fortune can be.
Ion continues questioning whether Apollo is indeed his father or whether Creusa invented this excuse to hide a lover’s tryst. She confirms that Apollo is his father and that the god only claimed Xuthus was his father to ensure Ion was given a legitimate place in a noble family. Creusa encourages Ion to view Apollo’s actions as merciful.
Ion proposes to ask the god himself. As Xuthus approaches the temple to beseech Apollo, Athena appears above the temple. She assures Ion that Apollo is his father, but that Apollo failed to appear for fear of reproach. She explains that, after Ion was exposed, Apollo sent Hermes to retrieve the baby and bring him to Apollo’s temple at Delphi.
Athena next foretells how Ion will have four children, and their children in turn will colonize lands from Asia to Europe, and their people will be called Ionians after Ion’s name. Athena adds that Creusa and Xuthus will have two more children, Dorus and Achaeus, who will rule in the Peloponnesus and thus spread Athens’s fame and glory by means of their ancestry. Lastly, Athena expresses that it is Apollo’s wish that Ion’s royal paternity remain a secret from Xuthus and the general public in Athens.
Creusa and Ion rejoice at Athena’s words, and Creusa apologizes for casting aspersions on the god. Ion accepts his place as ruler of Athens, for which he and his mother are presumed to depart as they exit the stage.
Lines 1250-1622 Analysis
The section includes the play’s resolution and denouement. The resolution occurs when Creusa and Ion recognize one another’s true identity and thus their relationship as mother and son. Also part of the resolution is Creusa’s admission to being raped by Apollo, thus revealing Ion’s paternity. Creusa and Ion’s celebration of their reunion, and the observation of the gods’ caprice, effectively serves as the denouement. These lines also reveal the characters’ explicit reactions to the irony of which the audience has long been aware. Ion remarks, “By what a narrow line my steps have swerved / From mother-murder and horrors undeserved!” (1514-15). For her part, Creusa reminds the audience of the consequence of this discovery for the entire race of Athenians, stating, “Childless no more, no more without a line; / My hearth has now its fire, my land its king” (1463-64). This observation would of course resonate with an audience of people who were ethnically Athenian.
Symbolism is one of the most pronounced literary devices in this section (in fact, the English work “symbol” is derived from the Greek symbolon). The Pythia instructs Ion in the use of such symbols. She states, “Twas by His will divine / I reared thee, child; and back to thee I give / These vestures which He willed me to receive” (1356-59). These symbols include the specific items in the crib that Creusa abandoned as a young mother: an unfinished tapestry featuring the head of a Gorgon, two serpent-shaped necklaces sized for an infant, and a wreath of olive branches. These symbols have special relevance, as each is related to the identity and feats of the goddess Athena (the namesake of the city of Athens). Euripides also employs anagnorisis, a moment in which a character finally discovers their true identity, such as during Ion and Creusa’s reunion.
Another obvious and pronounced literary device in Ion includes the use of deus ex machina. This technique, too, is widely practiced in ancient tragedies. This technique was used to resolve complicated plot situations and furnish a comparatively easy end to a play. Often translated from Latin as “god from the machine,” this move required the use of a physical machine (which scholars think involved a crane or pulley system) that suspended an actor playing a deity in midair to give the impression that the actor was flying. In this case, the deus ex machina was used to introduce Athena, who names herself plainly to aid the audience’s understanding, saying, “It is I who give your land its name” (1556). Euripides uses deus ex machina in other plays, including Orestes, in which the god represented is Apollo himself; moreover, this strategy was not employed only by Euripides. Sophocles’s famous play Oedipus Rex features the elderly seer Tiresias as the so-called deus. In modern film and literary criticism, deus ex machina is (sometimes pejoratively) used to describe any unlikely ending that provides an elegant (and perhaps too easy) resolution.
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