Ion

Ion is a tragedy by Euripides, set at Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi, that ends happily. It tells how Creusa, daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus, finds the son she bore to Apollo and abandoned as a baby, and how that son, raised as a temple servant at Delphi, becomes the ancestor of the Ionians. In the prologue Hermes explains the background (lines 1–81): Apollo took Creusa by force in a cave below the Acropolis, she exposed the child, and Hermes carried him to Delphi, where the priestess raised him. Years later Creusa and her husband Xuthus, a foreigner, who have no children, come to the oracle. Xuthus is told that the first person he meets as he leaves the temple is his son, and he meets the boy. Creusa, hearing this, plots to kill him. The plot fails, the mother and son recognise one another by the tokens in the basket in which he was found, and Athena appears to settle matters (lines 1553–1622).

Date and Historical Background

No surviving ancient source gives the year of the first production of Ion, the festival at which it was staged, or the other plays that were performed with it. The date therefore remains uncertain. The play deals with a founding story of Athens: Ion is presented as the ancestor of the Ionians, and his four sons give their names to the four old Athenian tribes (lines 1571–1594).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Hermes, the messenger of the gods, who speaks the prologue
• Ion, son of Apollo and Creusa, a servant of the temple of Apollo
• Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus of Athens, mother of Ion and wife of Xuthus
• Xuthus, an Achaean, son of Aeolus, who won Creusa as his wife for helping Athens in a war against Euboea (lines 57–64)
• Old Servant, an old man who was once the tutor of Creusa’s father Erechtheus and now attends Creusa (lines 725–734)
• Servant, another attendant of Creusa, who brings the news of the failed poisoning
• The Pythian Priestess, who raised Ion and keeps the basket in which he was found
• Athena, who appears at the end
• Chorus of Creusa’s women attendants

Setting

The play is set before the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Summary of Ion

Prologue

Hermes introduces himself as the son of Maia and Zeus, grandson of Atlas, and says he has come to Delphi, where Apollo gives his oracles (lines 1–9). In Athens, he says, Apollo forced himself on Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, in the cave below the rock of Pallas called Macrae. She hid her pregnancy from her father, bore the child, and laid him in the same cave in a round woven basket, following the custom of her ancestors and of Erichthonius, the earth-born child whom Athena entrusted to the daughters of Agraulus guarded by two serpents. Since then the Erechthidae put golden snakes round their babies as protection. Before leaving him she tied her own embroidered robe round him (lines 10–26).

Apollo asked his brother Hermes to take the baby, with his cradle and swaddling-clothes, to Delphi and lay him at the entrance of the temple. Hermes did so and opened the lid of the basket so that the child could be seen. A priestess found him at dawn; she meant at first to remove him from the sanctuary, but out of pity she took him in and brought him up, knowing neither his father nor his mother. When he grew up the Delphians made him treasurer of the god and steward of all his store (lines 27–56).

Meanwhile Creusa has married Xuthus. There was a war between Athens and the people of Chalcodon in Euboea, and Xuthus, an Achaean descended from Aeolus son of Zeus and no native Athenian, helped to end it and received Creusa as his reward. After many years of marriage they are still childless and have come to the oracle (lines 57–66). Hermes then reveals Apollo’s plan: when Xuthus enters the shrine the god will give him his own son and say that Xuthus is the father, so that the boy may come to his mother’s house and be acknowledged by Creusa, while the god’s union with her stays secret. The boy will be named Ion and found a people through all of Hellas (lines 67–75). Hermes goes to hide in a laurel grove to see what is decreed for the child, and greets Ion by his future name as the young man comes out to sweep the temple (lines 76–81).

Ion, in a song, greets the morning and describes his daily work: sweeping the entrance with laurel, sprinkling water from the Castalian spring, and driving off birds with his bow so that they do not harm the offerings. He calls himself an orphan, fatherless and motherless, and says that Phoebus is to him like the father who begot him (lines 82–183).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The chorus of Creusa’s women arrive and admire the carvings on the temple: Heracles and Iolaus killing the Lernaean hydra, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, and the battle of the gods and the giants, with Athena over Enceladus, Zeus with his thunderbolt, and Dionysus killing a giant with his thyrsus. Ion tells them they may not enter the inner sanctuary unless they have sacrificed sheep, and asks whose servants they are. They answer that they belong to the household whose home is the city of Pallas, and then that their mistress is coming (lines 184–236).

First Episode

Ion notices that Creusa is weeping in front of the temple and asks who she is. “Creusa is my name, the daughter of Erechtheus I; my native land is Athens,” she answers (lines 258–260). Their conversation turns to Athenian stories: Erichthonius sprung from the earth, the daughters of Cecrops who opened Athena’s basket, the sacrifice of Erechtheus’ daughters for the country, and the death of Erechtheus, whom Poseidon struck with his trident. Creusa also says that her husband is not an Athenian but Xuthus, son of Aeolus, who won her by helping to sack Euboea. When Ion asks what the couple are consulting the oracle about, she says they are childless and that Xuthus is at that moment visiting the cave of Trophonius (lines 261–304).

Ion in turn tells her that he is called a slave of Loxias, that he knows neither the woman who bore him nor his father, and that he was brought up by the priestess of Phoebus, whom he considers his mother (lines 308–325). Creusa then says that she wants a secret answer for a friend: “A friend of mine asserts that Phoebus lay with her,” and the child she bore the god was exposed and has never been found; he would be Ion’s age if he were alive (lines 338–354). Ion refuses to put the question to the god: “He is ashamed of the deed; do not question him.” He argues that Apollo would never reveal what he wants hidden and that no one in his temple should force an oracle against the god’s will (lines 363–380). Creusa accuses Apollo of injustice (lines 384–389). Xuthus returns from the cave of Trophonius and says only that neither of them will go home childless. He goes into the temple, and Creusa goes to pray at the altars (lines 401–428).

Left alone, Ion wonders about her hints and then speaks against Apollo himself. The god, he says, has raped a girl and left their son to die; if gods paid a fine for each act of unlawful love they would empty their temples to pay it, and it is the gods who set men the example of wrongdoing (lines 429–451).

First Stasimon

The chorus pray to Athena, Victory and Artemis that the house of Erechtheus may at last have a child, because children are a protection to their fatherland in war. They also sing of the cave of Macrae, where the daughter of Erechtheus bore a child to Phoebus and exposed him as food for birds and beasts, and they remark that they have never heard in story or song that children whom mortal women bear to gods have any share in good fortune (lines 452–509).

Second Episode

Xuthus comes out of the temple and greets Ion: “All hail! my son.” Ion takes him for mad and threatens him with an arrow, until Xuthus explains that the god told him that the first man he met when leaving the temple was his own son: “A gift, but mine for all that” (lines 517–538). Neither can say who the mother is. Xuthus admits to love affairs in his youth and to having taken part in the Bacchic rites at Delphi, drunk, in the days before he married Creusa, and he concludes that Ion’s mother must have exposed him (lines 539–556). Ion accepts what the god says: “It is not right that I should mistrust the god” (line 557). He embraces his new father, and then longs to see his mother (lines 561–565).

Xuthus invites him to Athens, but Ion hesitates. As the son of a foreigner and of an unknown mother he expects to be resented in a city proud of its native-born citizens, to be hated by powerful men if he succeeds, and to make Creusa, childless, his enemy. He prefers his quiet life at Delphi (lines 585–647). Xuthus will not hear of it. He says he will hold a feast of birth, will take Ion to Athens as a guest and not as his son so as not to hurt his wife, and will persuade her in time to give him the sceptre. He gives him the name Ion because he was the first to meet him as he came out of the sanctuary, and he warns the chorus that death awaits them if they tell Creusa (lines 650–667). Ion hopes his mother will be Athenian, because a foreigner in an Athenian city has no freedom of speech (lines 668–675).

Second Stasimon

The chorus lament that their mistress will see her husband blessed with a son while she is left childless, and fear some trick in the oracle. They curse Xuthus and pray that the boy never come to their city but die young, since his coming would supply the city with an excuse for foreign rule if it ever fell on evil days (lines 676–724).

Third Episode

Creusa arrives with the Old Servant, who was once the tutor of her father Erechtheus (line 725). The chorus, after some hesitation, tell her that Apollo has given Xuthus a son, who is the young man who was sweeping the temple, and that he has been named Ion (lines 725–806). The Old Servant concludes that Xuthus has deceived her: finding her barren, he took a slave woman, had a son by her, had the boy brought up at Delphi, and then brought Creusa to the oracle to have him accepted. “Wherefore must thou now put thy woman’s wit to work; either take the dagger, or by guile or poison slay thy husband and his son” (lines 808–856).

Creusa breaks her silence in a song addressed to Apollo. She tells how he came to her as she gathered saffron flowers in the folds of her robe, took her by the wrist and led her to the cave, how she bore his son and left him there, and how the god now plays his lyre while the child has been devoured by birds, as she believes (lines 859–922). She then tells the Old Servant the story in plain words. When he urges her to burn Apollo’s sanctuary she is afraid, and she will not kill her husband because she respects the love he once showed. She agrees to kill the new son (lines 934–985).

Creusa’s method is a drop of Gorgon’s blood that she wears in a golden bracelet. Athena gave two drops from the Gorgon’s veins to the baby Erichthonius; one drop cures illness and gives life, the other is a deadly poison, and they are kept separate. The bracelet passed from Erichthonius to Erechtheus and then to Creusa. She gives the poison to the Old Servant, who is to pour it into Ion’s cup at the feast (lines 987–1047).

Third Stasimon

The chorus call on Hecate, daughter of Demeter, to guide the hand that carries the poisoned cup, so that no foreigner may rule the house of Erechtheus. They say Creusa will kill herself if the plan fails, and they say that it would shame the god of song if this newcomer, favoured by Phoebus, were to take part in the torch-dance by the springs of Callichorus in honour of the maiden with the golden crown and her mother, and they denounce men’s unfaithfulness (lines 1048–1105).

Fourth Episode

A servant of Creusa runs in, looking for her, because the Delphian rulers are seeking her to stone her. He tells the chorus what happened (lines 1106–1228). Xuthus went off to sacrifice to Dionysus and told Ion to prepare a feast in a tent. Ion built a spacious tent and decorated it with tapestries from the temple treasury, among them Heracles’ spoils from the Amazons, with the heavens, the sun, night and the stars woven into them. When the guests were seated, an old man began to serve, uninvited, and joked that large cups were better than small ones. He chose a full cup and handed it to Ion, after he had put in the drug. Just then someone in the tent said something of ill omen. Ion, brought up among the temple seers, took it as a sign, told them to pour out the cup and fill another, and ordered everyone to pour out their libation. Doves from the sanctuary came to drink the spilt wine, and one that drank from the cup meant for Ion died in convulsions. Ion seized the old man, who was made to confess that Creusa had planned the poisoning. Ion called on the Delphians, who voted that she should be thrown from the rock for trying to kill a servant of the god in the temple.

Lyric Interlude

The chorus cannot think of a way to escape. They wonder whether they could fly away or hide under the earth, and they ask what their mistress now must suffer, since the wrong they planned against another has fallen on themselves (lines 1229–1249).

Exodos (Exit Song)

Creusa hurries in, pursued, and takes refuge on the altar, because it is forbidden to kill a suppliant (lines 1250–1260). Ion comes with the Delphians and calls on the river Cephisus, from whom her family descends, and calls her a viper and a dragon who used Gorgon’s blood on him, and says that neither the altar nor Apollo’s shrine will protect her (lines 1261–1281). They quarrel: she claims that she now belongs to Apollo, and says she tried to kill him only to save her own house from a foreigner’s heir (lines 1282–1305). Ion also complains that the gods have made bad laws if criminals and the innocent have the same refuge (lines 1282–1319).

The Pythian Priestess comes out of the temple, and Ion greets her as a mother. She tells him not to go to Athens with blood on his hands. She also gives him the basket in which she found him, which she has kept hidden by the god’s wish until now. The objects in it may help him to find his mother (lines 1320–1368). Ion laments that his mother gave him up secretly and decides to open the basket, rather than give it to the god (lines 1369–1394).

Creusa sees the basket and runs from the altar: “I see the ark wherein I did expose thee, my child.” Ion orders her seized, but she says what is in it before it is opened: the robe she wove as a girl, an unfinished first piece of weaving, with a Gorgon in the middle and a fringe of snakes like the aegis; golden serpents, a custom she learned from Erichthonius, which are necklaces for the baby; and an olive wreath from the tree Athena made grow on the Acropolis (lines 1395–1436). Ion finds each of the objects and embraces her. “Mother, dearest mother,” he says, and Creusa replies that she now has an heir and the land a prince (lines 1437–1467).

Ion wants Xuthus to share their joy, but Creusa has to explain that his father is not Xuthus. She tells the story of Apollo, of the tenth month and of the cave (lines 1468–1500). Ion, suspecting for a moment that she is covering a mortal lover, asks how the god gave him to Xuthus as his son, and she answers that the god never said “begotten”; he gave the boy as a gift, as a friend might give a friend his own son, to make him heir to a house (lines 1520–1545). Ion still wants to question Apollo in the temple, when Athena appears above the building.

Athena says that Apollo sent her because he did not wish to meet them in person and be reproached for the past (lines 1553–1569). She confirms that Creusa is his mother and Apollo his father, and tells Creusa to take Ion to Athens and set him on the throne of Erechtheus. Ion’s four sons will give their names to the tribes of the land, first Geleon, then the Hopletes, the Argades and the Aegicores, and his descendants will settle the islands of the Cyclades and the coasts of Europe and Asia, and be called Ionians. From Creusa and Xuthus will come Dorus, from whom the Dorians descend, and Achaeus, who will rule on the coast near Rhium (lines 1571–1594). Creusa must keep the secret, so that Xuthus can enjoy believing that Ion is his son (lines 1595–1605). Creusa now praises the god she had cursed, and mother and son set out for Athens with Athena (lines 1609–1618). The chorus end the play with a prayer to Apollo and a statement that in the end the righteous find their just reward (lines 1619–1622).

A Brief Analysis

The play’s plot turns on the difference between what Apollo says and what he means. Xuthus hears that the first man he meets is “a gift, but mine for all that” (line 537), and takes the word to mean that Ion is his own son. Creusa’s answer to Ion is that the god never said “begotten” (line 1534), and Athena confirms that Apollo gave Ion to Xuthus on purpose, to bring him to a house of high repute (lines 1560–1564). Ion himself doubts it, and wonders whether the god “speaks truth or gives an idle oracle” (lines 1537–1538).

The play also asks how the gods should be judged. Ion criticises Apollo for his treatment of Creusa and says that gods who break the laws they give to men should be punished (lines 436–451); Creusa accuses him of betraying her (lines 859–922); and Ion complains of the law of sanctuary that protects the guilty with the innocent (lines 1312–1319). At the end, Creusa withdraws her blame (lines 1609–1613).

The question of who may rule Athens runs through the play. The chorus and the Old Servant refuse to see a foreigner’s son as master of the house of Erechtheus (lines 719–724, 808–831, 1055–1060), and Ion says that the Athenians, a native people, would resent an alien’s son (lines 589–606). Creusa stresses her descent from Erichthonius, born from the earth (lines 267–274). Athena settles the problem by declaring Ion to be of the stock of Erechtheus and so entitled to rule, and the founder of the Ionians, while Xuthus’ sons Dorus and Achaeus are the ancestors of the Dorians and Achaeans (lines 1571–1594).

Sources

Euripides, Ion, lines 1–1622: the prologue of Hermes (1–81), the scenes of Ion and Creusa (237–451), the oracle given to Xuthus (517–675), the plot against Ion (725–1047), the messenger’s report (1106–1228), the recognition (1250–1548) and the speech of Athena (1553–1605).

See Also: Euripides, Ion, Creusa, Apollo, Hermes, Athena, Erechtheus, Erichthonius