44 pages • 1 hour read
Ed. John C. Gilbert, EuripidesIon
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Themes
The Plight of Women
In Greek tragedy, the chorus was usually the same gender as the main character. While Ion is the titular character, Euripides gives Creusa more emotional depth by featuring a chorus of female handmaidens. In extant Greek tragedy, the chorus’s contributions were usually emotional (whether celebratory or plaintive) in nature. The audience would be alerted to when the chorus spoke not only because of the multitude of voices but also because the choral sections exhibit a different meter. Translators sometimes try to capture the sing-song nature of this meter by using a rhyme, as in the following choral lines:
Never in histories of old,
Or tales that round our loom were told,
A child gotten of god hath borne
To woman aught but woe (506-09).
The handmaidens are an apt chorus for Creusa, as they acknowledge their share in her fate. For example, they claim that they wish to die should their mistress die at the hands of the irate lords of Delphi: “No escape, none. ’Tis death for me. / All seen, all known!” (1229-31). Later in the same speech, the chorus even assumes responsibility for encouraging their mistress to seek Ion’s death and further claims that they deserve the capital punishment:
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 (1246-50).
In verse, they also routinely chant the lament of women, even suggesting that bards sing of male infidelity rather than female love trysts. Though largely considered an anachronistic classification, many scholars (such as Sue-Ellen Case in her 1985 article “The Classic Drag”) have considered classical theater to have a feminist tinge. Ultimately, such an argument is tenuous, as the audience of Greek theater may have even excluded women; however, it is clear that Euripides in particular at least invited the audience to empathize with not only Creusa but with all wronged women (recall that his own Medea was the prototype of such a woman). This is apparent in emotionally charged lines such as this: “Ah, women still / Are born to suffer, gods to work their will!” (251-52).
Lest these laments seem vacuous, the events of the plot seem to bear them out: Creusa’s victimization at the hands of Apollo, followed by suffering the exposure her child to avoid public scorn, coupled with her subsequent (ironic) inability to conceive a child with her husband Xuthus, make Creusa an exceptionally pitiable character. Therefore, when she plots against the would-be usurper Ion, encouraged by her slave and chorus, the audience (who knows Ion is her son) cannot help but note that tragedy upon tragedy befalls her.
The chorus is the natural proof of, and mouthpiece for, the injustices suffered by women, often at the hands of men. Creusa only scarcely averts the downfall that would have resulted from bearing a child out of wedlock. This would have been a very likely fate for many women in her situation, who were forced to abandon their children or live in infamy among those who inhabited the socially scrupulous fifth-century Athens.
Athenian Hegemony
Athenian hegemony (or the special privileges of voting, traveling, attending theater, and other trappings of civil life owed to the Athenian people) is a major theme of this text. Athens occupied a special place in the ancient world as the capital city state of Greece. In fact, when this play was first produced, Athens was at war with Sparta (the Peloponnesian War, waged between 431 and 405 BCE), seeking to prove its superiority throughout the Greek world. This play features several moments that allude to Athenians having sprung from the soil, descending directly from Erichthonius, who, according to legend, was born directly from the earth goddess Gaia.
The theme of Athenian hegemony can be traced in several portions of the text. First, Ion, though he later celebrates his reversal of fortune upon discovering that Xuthus is his alleged father, is acutely despondent at the prospect of how he will be treated back in Athens. One of Ion’s major fears about accompanying Xuthus back to Athens is that both he and his father are not ethnically Athenians and so would likely evoke the ire of the residents there. He laments,
Athens! A folk born of the soil, not brought
From other lands at all, so I am taught,
Has made that city. Think; should I not bear
A twofold stain, to come intruding there,
My father alien and myself base-born? (589-93).
He later adds, “Yet, if among the princes of the state / I claim to sit, shall I not earn much hate / Of the weaker folk?” (599-602). Ion establishes himself as a humble character from the opening scene, which finds him sweeping the sanctuary floors. Thus, it is unsurprising that he shows reverence for the “princes of the state” in the largest city in the classical world: Athens.
The play attests that Creusa and her father, King Erechtheus, descend directly from this line. This is introduced as early as Hermes’s introductory speech, when he states that, “Twas thus to Erichthonius, child of earth / Athena gave, as guardians of his birth / Two serpent” (21-23). Hermes specifically explains that the snakes given to Athens’s first king are like those snakes given to Ion as an exposed infant.
Creusa, too, contributes to this tone of xenophobia when, in the throes of despair upon learning that Ion is supposedly Xuthus’s illegitimate son, she claims, “What right had the Aeolid [Xuthus] in Pallas’ land?” (1297). Soon after, she later claims that “[a] foreign ally is no citizen” (1300). Even though Creusa is seemingly happy in her marriage to Xuthus, she harbors deep-seated prejudice against non-Athenians.
Athena’s arrival as deus ex machina confirms this theme. She enjoins Creusa and Ion to go to Athens, where he can rightly rule. Moreover, she foretells how he himself will have children who, by means of colonization, will settle other Mediterranean lands and bring “[m]ore greatness for the land that bears my name” (1586). Though the play is set in Delphi, Athens and the Athenian people are celebrated throughout.
The Importance of Family
One’s family is of supreme importance in this play. From the beginning, Ion comments on how desperately he wishes to know his mother. Presumably, his preoccupation with knowing his mother owes to the fact that he considers Apollo his father (of course, by the close of the play, he discovers that Apollo is his biological father). In Ion’s opening monologue, he calls himself “[m]otherless and fatherless” (109). However, he admits, “I name my father: here is He / Father and life-giver to me / Lord Phoebus in his sanctuary” (138-41). Ion’s circumstances at the outset of the play are, by his own admission, modest but fulfilling; he even calls his condition a “happy slavery!” (121). Nevertheless, his desire to know his mother specifically is already pronounced.
This noticeable preoccupation with determining the identity of his mother persists. In fact, Ion cannot help but think of anything else, even after meeting Xuthus and being acknowledged as the son of the royal family. Though Xuthus is unreservedly elated when told that he is Ion’s father, Ion immediately seeks to know more: “Enough.—My mother, who was she who gave me birth?” (538). Xuthus confesses that he neglected to inquire for further details of Ion’s birth; however, in the ensuing discussion, Xuthus admits that he took part in orgies during celebrations of the god Dionysus, and they speculate that Ion’s mother probably gave him up as an infant (a supposition which of course abuts the truth). Once Ion receives and processes this news from Xuthus, he states, “Mother! Dear Mother! Can it be that some day I shall see you too / Before me? More than ever yet, where’er you are, I long for you. / And now it may be, you are dead. Then there is nothing I can do” (563-66). Thus, Ion is left only partly satisfied, and with a lingering curiosity to know his mother. His relentless pursuit of his family contributes greatly to his characterization.
Parallel to this, Creusa is equally eager to know what happened to the son she abandoned as an infant. In the opening scenes, Creusa not-so-subtly attributes her circumstances to a supposed friend of hers who was forced to abandon her child as an infant. Creusa explains that her friend supposes the child “torn by wild beasts” (348) since he was not in the cave when she returned to look for him some time after. Of her alleged friend, Creusa muses, “In her whole life what is there but despair?” (364). The chorus does not know that this misfortunate tale is Creusa’s own, though they do commiserate with Creusa’s friend.
The reuniting of this royal, partly divine family is as cathartic for the two principal characters as for the audience. Ion discovers his birth mother, and Creusa learns her infant son did not die when she exposed him in a cave. Moreover, she procures a legitimate heir for the royal house of Athens, emphasizing and ensuring the city-state’s continuing glory before a contemporary audience of ethnic Athenians.
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