Euripides Ion

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Text Access

Euripides. Ion. Trans. Paul Roche. 10 Plays. New York: Signet Classic, 1998. 101-61.

Journal Prompt

Let's try something different. Let's take it as given that

Euripides' Ion, even if it almost could have resulted in a stage littered with bodies, a temple defiled by impiety and impurity, mistakes-crimes (hamartia) that could only be avenged with bloody retribution, does not result in that
Euripides' Ion, in fact, ends happily
Euripides' Ion is a tragedy

Yes, a tragedy. Now, note that I am not unilaterally "decreeing" the play a tragedy any more than I am admitting it isn't one. Rather, I am responding to a tendency among students to assume that tragedies must end sadly. To assume that would seem, indeed, to assume at least a partial essence for tragedy, namely, that tragedies, whatever else they are, are sad.

But are they? Let's think of Alcestis. And how about Aeschylus Eumenides, not to mention Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus? None of those ends altogether sadly. All three could be labeled (and have been) tragedies.

So I want you just to run a thought experiment to interrogate some of our assumptions : IF WE TAKE IT AS GIVEN THAT ION IS A TRAGEDY, WHAT (given other things we know about tragedy) IS TRAGEDY? So, for instance, if you had to take this at times funny, at times shocking, at times sentimental play as a tragedy, would that force you to revise your definition of the genre? Or what might it be that causes you to resist that labeling? (Again, that happy ending really won't cut it. . . .)

Play Facts

We do not know the circumstances or date of the play's production — its tetralogy, etc. Stylistic grounds (similarity to Trojan Women) and other considerations suggest a dating ranging from about 415 to ab out 413 BCE.

Setting, Situation

The setting is Delphi, Apollo's chief place of prophecy. After the back-story prologue delivered by Hermes, we meet a young man a temple slave, a young man in service to Apollo. Now, this young man doesn't even have a name at the begriming of the play (so this will be, if nothing else, a drama of recognition), but he will eventually receive the name Ion.

We soon learn that a childless couple have come to Delphi to inquire how they might have children: Xuthus, the non-Athenian husband of the Athenian princess Creusa (Xuthus, a coarse but brave and good-natured Aeolian, had fought for Athens), and Creusa, his wife.

What they don't yet know — what no moral yet knows — is that the soon-to-be-named Ion is actually the son of Apollo. The god had, it turns out, ravished Creusa once when she was picking flowers underneath the cliffs of the Athenian Acropolis.

Note that impregnation by a god could present a mortal girl of respectable class with a challenge: Where'd that baby come from? Creusa decided to expose the baby in the same cave where she'd given birth, indeed, had been raped. She leaves, therefore, the child up to its fate, though she leaves as well tokens (swaddling cloth woven by her, snake figures, olive crown) marking it as hers.

Apollo, pitying the child, had it transported to Delphi where it grew into a young man. But now that mom has arrived, how to reintroduce Ion to the city of his birth?

Apollo, the god of true prophecy, devises a trick! He will pass off the young man as Xuthus'. But that plan almost goes afoul. . . .

Characters

HERMES. The prologue speaker.

ION. A temple slave at Delphi, son of Apollo and Creusa. A callow youth who going to have a day full of surprises. . . .

CREUSA. Athenian princess, wedded to Xuthus. Earlier, had been raped by Apollo, though she'd successfully concealed the fact from her family.

XUTHUS. Aeolian general who fought for Athens and won an Athenian princess for his bride.

OLD MAN. A loyal old servant of Creusa, he urges her not to trust this new-found son of Xuthus', whom he urges Creusa to kill.

SERVANT. Will deliver a messenger speech describing the near poisoning of Ion.

CHORUS OF WOMEN SERVANTS of Creusa.

Issues, Themes

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. In some ways, the play is a weird replay of Oedipus the King. Here, as there, the Delphic injunction, "Know Thyself!" seems an inescapable subtext. Is self-knowledge, though, tragic in the Ion?

THEOLOGY. This play, not unlike the same god in Aeschylus' Eumenides and Euripides' Alcestis, forces us to question Apollo as an exemplar of divinity's just claim to rule supreme. Note, for instance, Creusa's and the Chorus' bitterness at the god, whose ravishing of Creusa the Chorus labels hubris (o. 121 = line 506), Ion's soliloquy suggesting doubt of the divine as a proper moral foundation, and Ion's question, Ion: "Is the god genuine or are his oracles a fraud?" (p. 158). Well, what is he? Does this play bolster or undermine our faith in the divine?

DECEPTION. Apollo deceives! Note: Apollo is not a trickster divinity by default. (Hermes is.) So, do you give Apollo good marks for a deception well done? Or does he (almost?) make a mess of it? Or is it outrageous that he would even try? In connection with deception, not imagery with which the play is replete: concealing caves; mysterious, miraculous baskets (not just Ion's, but that concealing the infant Erichthonius); swaddling clothes; snakes, snakes SNAKES! what do you make of that?