Barry Stocker Department of Humanities and SocialScience [email protected] Faculty of Science and Letters http://barrystockerac.wordpress.com

SPRING 2019 TOPICS IN LITERATURE AND SOCIETY NOTES WEEK TWELVE EURIPIDES ION

Ion is like Oedipus the King in that it deals with the issue of a child abandoned soon after birth. Abandonment of babies to die (‘exposure’) soon after birth was legal in Athens and other Greek states and was particularly likely to happen where the child was born outside marriage. In Oedipus the King the reason is prophecy and a curse, while in Ion it is because the mother was an unmarried woman raped by a god. In both cases the child survives and encounters at least one of the parents. The outcome of Ion is less violent and destructive than Oedipus the King, but is tragic because it is based on a conflict between gods and humans. The god Apollo (also referred to as Phoebus and Loxias) rapes the Athenian girl Creusa, daughter of the king, and then commands her to abandon the baby that results and keep their connection a secret. The ancient Greek gods rape human women a number of times in the mythology and literature. Euripides maybe criticises actions which seem taken as inevitable in earlier times. He is writing at a time when philosophers, like Socrates who he knew, were taking a critical attitude towards religious mythology and the lack of morality in the gods. Socrates himself was sentenced to death by forced suicide for reasons which include ‘inventing new gods’, so the ancient Athenians were not entirely open to criticism of their religion, but clearly the most educated were sceptical. Euripides attitude is not absolutely clear. Apollo’s rape of Creusa enables Ion to become king of Athens (sometimes referred to as ‘Cecrop’s land, with reference to an early king) and then then ancestor of a number of royal dynasties in the Greek world. This can only happen though because Ion and Creusa challenge the silence of Apollo and the gods. Her speech against Apollo towards the end of the play can be seen as an attack on his supposed attributes, so that Creusa undermines his claims to be the god of music, by referring to her screams when raped by him, he is supposed to the god of light, but rapes her in a cave, and so on. When Ion is abandoned, Apollo arranges for the baby to be rescued by his brother, the god Hermes, and brought up in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where he becomes a guardian. The sanctuary at Delphi is important in a number of Greek tragedies. The role of the Sanctuary is explained by Hermes in the prologue to the play as a place at the centre of the world where Apollo gives prophecies. People from all 2 the many Greek states regarded Delphi as a place for prophecies, which were sometimes about states and war, so that ‘prophecies’ priests came from Apollo influenced the politics and international relations of the time. Ion is taken from Athens to Delphi, suggesting a particular link between Athens and Delphi, so that Athens is as important as Delphi as a centre of the Greek world. Creusa later marries Xuthus from Euboea (also known as Elis, an island off the east coast of Greece close to the region of Attica which contains Athens), a reward for Xuthus for helping Athens in war. This connects with an issue of foreigners in Athens. The play refers to the Athenians as growing from the ground. We have already discussed the belief of Thebans that their first ancestors grew from the soil. These autochthonous origin stories for Greek cities reinforce their assumption that membership of the community and legal citizenship was tied to a long line of ancestry and that they lived where their ancestors were born. The play gets round the idea that a non-Athenian, on the father’s side, might be the King of Athens by making Apollo the real father. Only a god is an acceptable substitute for another Athenian. The suggestion that an Athenian king was the son of Apollo, gives Athens a special role in Greece. Ion is able to become the future king when Creusa and Xuthus visit Delphi. The reason for the visit is that they have had no children and Xuthus wants an heir. In Delphi, Xuthus receives the prophecy that the first person he sees leaving the temple is his son. This person is Ion. Xuthus assumes that he is his son by a brief liaison with a woman in Delphi. Ion is startled by Xuthus’ interest in him and the suggestion that he should be recognised as the illegitimate son of Xuthus. He is concerned that in such an arrangement, he will not be accepted by the Athenians, meaning he cannot speak in public assemblies or exercise political power, as the bastard son of a foreigner. Creusa learns of the arrangement that Xuthus wants to make and becomes jealous of Ion, as a son from a woman other than herself. She is so jealous that she tries to kill Ion. Ion himself wants to kill her when he realises that she is attempting to kill him. At this point Creusa recognises the cloth she wrapped Ion in when abandoning him. This has the portrait of a gorgon on it, that is the monster woman whose look kills, a sign of protection. Athena appears to Ion to explain the story to him. Ion and Creusa are now both ready to go back to Athens, publicly agreeing to the fiction that Xuthus believes, that is that Ion is Xuthus’ illegitimate son from Delphi. Ion investigates questions about who has the right, the duty, and the courage to speak the truth. The play was written during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The prophecies at Delphi were siding with Sparta, so we can see Euripides’ play as part of an effort to suggest that Delphi is really aligned deep down with Athens, and should join the Athenian coalition.