Ion

Not to be confused with Euripides’ play Ion.

Ion was the legendary ancestor of the Ionians. In the best-known version, Euripides’ play Ion, he is the son of the god Apollo and the Athenian princess Creusa, raised at Delphi as a servant of the temple and later recognised by his mother and brought to Athens. In a different tradition he is a son of Xuthus and Creusa and a commander of the Athenians.

Birth and Upbringing at Delphi

In Euripides, Apollo forced himself on Creusa, a daughter of Erechtheus, in a cave under the north slope of the Acropolis, called Macrae. She hid her pregnancy from her father, gave birth in secret, and left the baby in the same cave, in a rounded ark, with the ornaments she had worn as a girl and, in the custom of the family of Erichthonius, with golden serpents as guardians. At Apollo’s request his brother Hermes took the baby, ark and all, from the cave to Delphi and laid him at the entrance of the temple. A priestess, the Pythia, found him and took pity on him. She raised him in the temple, and when he grew up the Delphians made him treasurer of the god and steward of his stores (Euripides, Ion 1–81).

Xuthus, Creusa and the Oracle

Creusa married Xuthus, a son of Aeolus and grandson of Zeus, an Achaean and not a native Athenian, as a reward for helping Athens in a war against Chalcodon of Euboea. The marriage had no children, so the couple travelled to Delphi to consult Apollo (Euripides, Ion 57–75). The god planned to give Xuthus his own son and to let Xuthus believe that the boy was his, so that Ion could come to his mother’s home and gain his rights without Apollo’s secret becoming known. Xuthus was told that the first person he met on leaving the temple was his son. That person was Ion, and Xuthus greeted him as “my son”, saying the god had given him a son who was born of him. Ion at first took him for a madman and threatened him with his bow, then reluctantly accepted him (Euripides, Ion 517–562). Xuthus named him Ion because he had met him as he came out of the shrine (Ion 661–663).

The Plot against Ion

Creusa, who had not been told, believed that her husband had a bastard son and wanted to bring him into her house. On the advice of an old servant she tried to poison Ion with a drop of the Gorgon’s blood, the one that kills, which she had inherited from Erichthonius. The poison was slipped into a cup at a banquet, but a dove drank the spilled wine and died, and the plot was exposed (Euripides, Ion 984–1047, 1122–1228). Ion and the Delphians condemned Creusa to death by stoning, and she took refuge at the altar of Apollo, where Ion could not strike her.

Recognition

The Pythia then came out of the temple carrying the cradle and the swaddling-clothes in which the baby had been found. When Creusa saw the ark, she recognised it as the one in which she had left her child, left the altar and named the things inside before Ion looked, and mother and son recognised each other (Euripides, Ion 1320–1437). At the end Athena appeared and explained that Apollo had arranged all this. She told Creusa to take Ion to Athens and to keep the secret from Xuthus. She foretold that Ion's four sons would give their names to tribes of Attica, and that the people of Europe and Asia who followed him would be called Ionians. Creusa and Xuthus would have two sons, Dorus and Achaeus, ancestors of the Dorians and Achaeans (Euripides, Ion 1553–1605).

Ion and the Ionians

In other traditions Ion is simply the son of Xuthus and Creusa. Apollodorus makes Xuthus, a son of Hellen, the father of Achaeus and Ion by Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus, and says that the Achaeans and Ionians took their names from them (Library 1.7.3). Herodotus says that the Athenians were called Ionians after Ion, the son of Xuthus, when he became commander of their army (Histories 8.44.2). Pausanias says that Xuthus, driven out of Thessaly, married the daughter of Erechtheus in Athens and had Achaeus and Ion by her. Ion married Helice, the only child of Selinus, king of Aegialus in the northern Peloponnese, succeeded him, named the city of Helice after his wife and called the people Ionians after himself. Later, when the Eleusinians made war on the Athenians, the Athenians invited Ion to lead them, and he died in Attica, where his tomb was in the deme of Potamus (Pausanias 7.1.2–5).

Ion Sources

Euripides, Ion 1–81, 517–562, 661–663, 984–1047, 1122–1228, 1320–1437, 1553–1605; Apollodorus, Library 1.7.3; Herodotus 8.44.2; Pausanias 7.1.2–5.

See Also: Apollo, Creusa, Xuthus, Hermes, Erechtheus, Athena, Delphi, Athens, Achaeus, Dorus