Ion - Euripides

Euripides' Ion is the story of a young man's search for his identity, and a woman's attempt to come to terms with her past. Through the story of a divine rape and its consequences, it asks questions about the justice of the gods and the nature of parenthood, encouraging its audience to consider contemporary concerns through the filter of traditional myth. 

Sanctuary of Pythian Apollo at Delphi

Omphalos [Navel] Stone, Delphi

Dramatis Personae

Hermes [the messenger god, Mercury]
Ion, [a nameless servant in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. He remains as such till the end of Episode 2, when he is given the name Ion]
Chorus of Handmaids of Creusa
Creusa [daughter of Erechtheus, King of Athens]
Xuthus, [an Achaean of Aeolid race, married to Creusa]
An Old Retainer [Tutor and devoted slave to Creusa]
A Messenger  [servant of Creusa]
The Pythia [prophetess of  the Delphi Oracle]
Athena [the goddess]

Setting: The Skene is the front of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Dawn.

Summary

Prologue [Lines 1–183]

Enter Hermes

The play opens with Hermes telling the backstory. Hermes tells us he is the messenger of Zeus; that he has come to Delphi, Apollo's seat of power, navel [omphalos] of the world, where oracles are delivered to man, about things that are and things that will come to be. He tells us that there is another city in Greece, named after Athena. Here Apollo forced himself on Creusa, daughter of its king, Erechtheus; how she carried her pregnancy to conclusion, never telling her father. She gave birth to a baby boy in the cave where she had been raped, and laid the baby out exposed in that cave to die. But in accordance with custom provided two snakes to be its bodyguard.

He then told the story how Apollo had sent him to rescue the baby, and bring it back to his oracle at Delphi, and to lay it on the threshold of his temple there, where Apollo would take care of it, after all it was his son. Now every day the priestess enters the temple at dawn. She saw the baby there on its steps. She was about to throw the baby out, but after picking it up began to care for it. She knew not it was Apollo's own child. It came to be that the baby grew up in the precints of the temple, becoming custodian of Apollo's treasure, trusted with the care of everything.

Meanwhile, back at Athens there had been a war between the Athenians and the Chalcedonians who held Euboea. Xuthus who had helped Athens to victory and was awarded the hand of Creusa in marriage. Together they had tried and tried for children, failing, and are childless. This is the reason they have come to Delphi to plea at Apollo's temple. 

Apollo has a plan: the moment Xuthus makes his plea, Apollo will hand the boy over to him to be his own, saying Xuthus is his father. Xuthus will take the boy back home where Creusa will acknowledge him. Apollo will keep his secret and the child gains his rights. Apollo has named the boy, Ion, founder of the Ionian cities in the East, 

Exit Hermes (he slips away into a thicket by the temple.) 

Ion's Monody (82-183)

Enter Ion: the temple doors open. Ion steps out.

Ion chants a dawn hymn to Apollo. He loves to serve the god. He tells the Delphinian priestesses to go wash themselves in the nearby Castalian springs to purify themselves in readiness to receive the pilgrim suppliants that day. The Pythian priestess is inside sitting on her tripod ready to deliver oracles, the words of Apollo whispered in her ear. The scent of aromatic herbs fills the temple. He will sweep the Sacred Way and sprinkle it with holy water, and with his bow and arrow shoot the birds that foul the offerings to Apollo. He declares he is an orphan, neither mother nor father. He serves Apollo's shrine.

Ion  sings and dances whilst he sweeps. He lays the dust by sprinkling it with water from golden vessels. He drives the birds away. He is happy: "The hand that feedeth me I bless. And that which gives me happiness I name my father: here is He, Father and life-giver to me, Lord Phoebus [Apollo] in his sanctuary." He defends the temple and its offerings killing the birds using his bow, those which are swooping down from the mountains.

Ion exits.

Parodos [Lines 184–236]

The Chorus of Creusa's  Handmaidens enter. Ion enters. Their mistress is not far behind. She has allowed them to go ahead They are enjoying the sights of the Oracle's precinct and temple. They describe the sculptures they see on the outside of the building: images of gods and myths, Heracles killing the Hydra [snake] of Lerna with his golden sickle, Iolaos with his torch, Bellapheron riding Pegasus killing the Chimera. And images of the gods fighting the Titans: Athena, their goddess, is there with her shield bearing the images of snake-headed Gorgons shaking it at the giant Enkelados. And Zeus too ready to fire off lightning bolts. Mimas the giant is here and has been burnt to ashes by one of these. Dionysos is there too with his thrysus covered with ivy killing another giant.  Ion is acting as their tour guide.

They ask can they go inside, barefoot? Ion says no. They ask if the temple is truly at the centre of the Earth. Ion confirms that there is the stone marking it [the omphalos] inside and it is truly there wreathed with garlands and gorgon heads. But without making a sacrifice of the blood of a sheep they may not enter. However, to gain an oracle from the god, they may instead make a burnt offering of grain on the fire outside. 

Ion asks them who they are, they seem so noble. They reply they are the slaves of Creusa, the queen of Athens, and here she is.

First Episode [Lines 237–451]

Creusa Enters.

Ion remarks that she looks wellborn, and her bearing and manner show it. He asks why is she crying.

Ion questions who she is, where is she from, what is her fatherland, what is her name.

Creusa answers “Creusa is my name, Erechtheus my father, and Athens is my fatherland,”

Ion comments what an honour it was to have such a person of noble origins to come here.

Ion asks her about the truth concerning the legends of her grandfather, Ericthonios: was he truly born from the earth (autochthonous)?

Creusa answers that Athena had pulled him from the earth's womb, and had given him to Kekrops' daughters to care for. When they opened up the cradle they jumped to their death off the edge of a precipice.

Ion: "Did your father sacrifice his two other daughters, your sisters?"

Creusa: "Yes! For the sake of Athens. I was a baby at the time."

Ion asks whether her husband is Athenian. Creusa answers he is not. His name is Xuthus and Creusa is his war bride. He had heped Athens in its war against the Euboians.  Ion asks where he is. He is at the shrine of Trophonius. 

She tells Ion that she and her husband have been married for a long time, but that they are childless and have come to find out that if by consulting the oracle anything can be done about this.

Creusa tells Ion that he looks happy, that his mother must be proud of him. 

Ion tells Creusa he knows not who is mother is.

Ion tells Creusa about how he came to the temple, that he is Apollo's servant. That he was left here as a foundling baby. No breast fed him, yet he calls the Pythia virgin, "mother". He knows not who his real father or mother are. He feeds himself on the offerings left on the temple's altars. He is Apollo's slave: the god feeds and clothes him. 

She also tells Ion about a friend of hers who had slept with the god Apollo, bearing him a child without her friend's father knowing this had happened. How the baby boy, after its birth, had been exposed, left out-of-doors to die. She wants to find out what might have happened to him. Whether he survived, and if he did where he might be.  

Ion asks how long ago was all this. Creusa says to Ion the boy would be about his age now. 

Ion tells Creusa that these latter matters are of the kind which must not be put to the oracle. If Apollo is ashamed of what he has done why should he have to answer for these his wongdoings, and certainly not in his own temple? If the gods are unwilling to answer certain questions, so be it. Apollo would punish anyone who would remotely make him seem wicked.

Creusa complains that this is most unfair. "But hush, here's my husband. Not a word on any of this to him."

Enter Xuthus.

Xuthus greets the temple of Apollo and offers his blessings, To his wife he apologises he is late/. Creusa asks him what did the Trophonius's shrine prophesy. 
Xuthus said Trophonius refused to answer till Apollo had done so.  "Who's here who can speak for Apollo?"

Ion replies "Outside the temple I speak for him. Inside others serve, those whose seat is nearer to the tripod. They are the elected Princes of Delphi, chosen by lot. They will deal with you."

Xuthus says he's going inside. "Creusa, I want my answer now!"

Exit Xuthus [he enters the temple]. 

Creusa: "If Apollo heals the wound I will accept it. He is a god."

Exit Creusa.

Ion: "Why does this woman speak so wildly?  She's hiding something. I'll go fetch some holy water and fill the golden bowls. I will confront Apollo. What has he done? Raped a girl and deserted her?  Fathered children without a care whether they live or die?  If he has power he ought to serve what is right.  If men act badly the gods punish them.  It's not right if the gods violate the laws. What if the all-powerful Poseidon and Zeus enforced the rape laws against such gods?  Their temples would be empty. Momentary pleasure is not right if we copy such behaviour. You gods are meant to be our teachers."

Exit Ion.

First Stasimon [Lines 452–509]

The Chorus chant an ode praying to Artemis and Athena, sisters of Apollo Phoebus, that he grant the House of Erechtheus  child upon child, that the promise of life may come to the barren.

Children to help their sorrow, to make more sweet their pleasure, 

To speak with their enemy ! Rather, I say, than gold, than a palace of pride. Give me children at home, right heritors of my blood. Let the miser plead for the childless side : I will none of it ! Wealth denied. Children given, I bless them, and cleave to the better good.

The Chorus complain that they have never before heard of a case like that of the birth of a child either to mankind or a god like Apollo, a baby having to be exposed as a blood-feast for birds. No greater evil has ever befallen the children born of gods or men.

Enter Ion.

Second Episode [Lines 510–675]

Enter Xuthus

Xuthus has come back out of the temple. The oracle has told him that the first person he meets after leaving the temple will be his son.

He sees Ion and tries to embrace him. and says to him accept my blessing. Let me embrace you. Let me kiss your hand. 

Ion replies "Are you in your right senses? Leave me alone!"

Xuthus says "It is no robbery to find one's own."

Ion says to him: "I will let fly an arrow at you if you touch me!"

Xuthus: "If you kill me you will have slain your father! You are my son."

Xuthus: "'tis true: Apollo has declared it so."

Ion: "My Father? 'tis a joke."

Xuthus: "The wording of the oracle: he that should encounter me as I came forth from the temple, he shall be my son!"

Ion: "This perplexes me. Was I of woman born? Did you in your youth have a careless encounter? Where you ever before in Delphi?"

Xuthus: "Many years ago, before I knew Creusa, when I was an initiate, on Dionysos night I got drunk and some women who were there made me free, Maenads. I enjoyed the pleasures of the god. The girl must have exposed you here. I am your father. Accept me."

Ion: "At least I am not a slave. I am the son of the son of Zeus. And you are my father?"

Xuthus: "Yes!" 

Ion still longs to know who his real mother is. Xuthus says come back to Athens where he will live the a noble life. They can look for her there. Ion tries to explain why he prefers Delphi: "Round me were pilgrims whom I led in prayer. Not men with gloomy faces, but all were glad ... And I am still a bastard!" 

Xuthus tells him: "Learn to be rich and great. ...  And I will take thee with me to Athens." He says he will prepare for a huge farewell feast for them in Delphi. Xuthus says when they go to Athens he will still not declare to his wife, Creusa, that he is his son, but only a visitor. He will wait for the right moment. Then he gives him his name, Ion.

Ion declares that he hopes his mother is Athenian born and that he can therefore call himself to be an Athenian citizen.

Exit Xuthus. As he does so he tells the Chorus, not a word about this to Creusa.

Exit Ion

Second Stasimon [Lines 676–724]

The Chorus of Creusa's Handmaidens sing an ode that all is not well with this arrangement: her husband with his son and she still barren, all alone.

And the temple boy? Who is he anyway? Who was his mother? Besides, he is a foreigner.

"Should we tell our mistress?"

And her husband? She came to Delphi with him with every hope. He's happy and she drowns in misery. She has shared everything in life: wife, wealth and palace. He only took. Moreover, he's only an outlander too. She is the one we love. May the gods curse him.

Now he's organising a banquet, a sacrifice a bacchanal with the wine-god for the boy's new day of re-birth. Let the boy die here [Delphi]. Athens does not need him.  May he never see it. He's a foreigner. We only want those of the untainted bloodline of Erectheus.

Third Episode [Lines 725–1047]

Enter Creusa with an old and frail man, her former Tutor and faithful slave)

Creusa to the Tutor: Years ago, my father chose you to be his children's guardian. Now we'll learn whether Apollo has riddled with his prophesy: does he promise good, the birth of a child to me or sorrow?
To the Chorus: tell me what the Oracle told my husband. 

Tutor: Has some evil been told to my lord?

Chorus: Alas, all is not well. What shall we do? Speak or not speak? Madame, never shall you hold a baby in your arms or feed it with your breasts.

Creusa: Oh let me die! This is too much agony.

Tutor: Have patience yet.

Chorus: Sir, upon her husband Apollo has bestowed a son. The queen, she will not participate in his happiness.

Creusa: Misery upon misery. 

Tutor: Has this son yet to be born? Or born already?

Chorus: He is full grown and has been given to our lord by Apollo.

Tutor: How did Apollo's oracle lead him to this person?

Chorus: The first man he would meet coming out of the temple was given to him as his child.

Creusa: Woe is me. I must bear a childless fate, weary and alone in a desolate palace.

Tutor: And who was thus assigned?

Chorus: My lady, it was that same boy you spoke to earlier, he who was sweeping the temple. Your husband has given him the name "Ion".

Tutor: My Lady, your husband has betrayed you. He, a denizen, took you for his wife, and your palace and heritage all for his own. Yet he has been raising secretly a child of another, privily siring a slave woman who begat a boy who was sent to be reared abroad, cloistered in a temple. Now when his father knew him to have become a grown man, he persuaded you, because you were childless, to come to Delphi. So was Apollo's prophecy, in truth, your husband's lie? Did the god scheme and conspire to make this boy a prince? And the name given to the boy, Ion, is it really new?

Chorus: What a villainous plot!

Tutor: And now you must bear the worst of all, to bring into your home the son of a slave, a motherless man, a no man's child. Less ill it would have been if the boy had been born to another woman of your consent and choice, pleading your barrenness. Now you must play the woman's part: to assassinate the boy and his father with a dagger, or poison them. If you flinch from this, you will die. I will help you to the end. So first, I will slay the lad. I will go to where the feast is being prepared. It matters not whether I live or die; a slave bears no shame. But by this act of virtue I may stand with the free.

Chorus: And we, dear lady, too will share the fact, ready to live with honour, or to die.

Creusa steps forward and has an internal monologue with herself.

Creusa: Tell me my heart, how can I keep my shame, my hidden secret quiet or to reveal it? Has not my lord been false with me?

I am cut off from home and child ; The hopes are gone, the unavailing hopes,

For which I kept mine honour safe, Keeping the secret of my ravishment,

The woeful secret of my babe.

I shall no longer bear that burden if by telling I may lift it from me.

She turns to the Chorus.

My eyes flow with tears. My heart aches, angered by both man and god. Their malice and traitors to love both. They shall escape no more.

A prayer made in private to herself:-

O Son of Lato [Apollo] thou camest to me when I was picking flowers. Thou didst grasp my wrists. Thou didst grasp me by the throat when I shrieked. O god, thou sparest nothing of thy lust to wreak. Ο misery! I bare to thee a son. In shame I left him there [exposed to die] where thou didst lie with me, where thou didst the deed with helpless me. The hungry birds didst then pounce upon the prey and he is gone, my baby, thy wretch and mine.

Son of Lato listen, before the omphalos and the golden throne, I did not come here to consult thee, but I will cry it in thine ear: thou art a false ravisher. To him my husband, whom thou owest naught thou gavest a heritor of his hearth. Yet my babe and thine torn away from a mother's care was glutted by the scavengers of the air.

Creusa flings herself down upon the steps of the temple. Her handmaidens gather round her.

Chorus: Is there no one here who would not weep?

Tutor: What is this, an accusation of the god? A baby of yours left somewhere in Athens for beasts to bury? Repeat to me the story. Voice your charge against Apollo.

Creusa: On the north slope of the Acropolis, amongst the caves and cliffs, known as the Long Rocks, in the Grotto of Pan, he forced himself on me there. I bare a child. It is a dreadful tale.

Tutor: Where? Who helped you? How did you conceal the truth of it?

Creusa: I gave birth to it in that same cave, alone.

Tutor: Where is the babe? Find him and you'll not be childless.

Creusa: The baby is dead, given to the beasts of prey.

Tutor: And Apollo gave you no help?

Creusa: No help at all. The Child grew up in Hades.

Tutor: Who exposed the baby? Not you? Did anyone see this?

Creusa: I did. No one witnessed it. In the dark I wrapped him in a swaddling cloth, placing him in a cradle. And secretly left him there. As I was leaving him he reached out with his tiny hands. 

Tutor: Hungry for your breasts?

Creusa: That I denied him.

Tutor: Did you secretly hope Apollo would save his own son?

Creusa weeps in shame.

Tutor: You and your father's name are doomed.

Creusa: What must I do?

Tutor: Take revenge on the god who did this to you.

Creusa: How? He's a god and I only a mortal woman.

Tutor: Burn his shrine down, this oracle of his, this temple of the god with the twisted tongue. 

Creusa: I'm scared to.

Tutor: Or kill your husband.

Creusa: He was once a good man.

Tutor: Then kill the temple boy, the one who stands against you.

Creusa and the Tutor discuss how they might do that. Creusa's handmaidens have weapons. He can be got at in the sacred tent where he is celebrating with his friends his rebirth and reunion with his "father". Creusa thinks this would be too much in the open. The Tutor calls her a coward. She tells him of a better plan she has. During the war of the gods with the Titans, the earth engendered the Gorgon to help them to defeat the mortals. Athena killed the monster, skinning and fashioning it into her breastplate, and armour. They call this her aegis, a breastplate linked with rings and rings of snakes. She goes on to explain that Athena gave her ancestor, Ericthonios, two drops of blood from the Gorgon: one which can kill humans poison from the Gorgon's snakes, and the other cure them of any illnesses. Creusa says she has inherited these drops in a bracelet which she has on her. The Tutor remarks she has everything she needs to kill the boy. 

Tutor: Say only when and how: the risk is mine.

Creusa: At home, in Athens, when he comes.

Tutor: This is not a good plan. You will be presumed to be the murderer.

Creusa: That reminds me of the story of the "Wicked Stepmother".

Tutor: Therefore kill him while he is here.

Creusa to the Tutor: Take this bracelet and do the deed.  Go to the banquet and after the food has been served and eaten, when they propose to make libations [drinking a toast, part drunk and part spilled on the ground.] put a drop of this in the boy's drinking goblet.  He will remain in Delphi dead.

Tutor: I will do this in the cause of the queen! Kill him and cast him forth !

Exeunt.

Third Stasimon [Lines 1048–1105]

The Chorus of Creusa's Handmaidens pray [sing an ode] to the goddess who rules over the boundaries, crossroads, witchcraft, ghosts and the night [Hecate] for their mistress' plot to succeed.

If it fails, if the boy's death goes unfulfilled,  Athens will end up being ruled by outsiders. This their queen could never endure. 

A cry of unlawful and unholy love in a woman's bed, tell us what men do to us. The son of Zeus [Apollo] oblivious, childless with our queen turns towards another's bed, ...  and finds a bastard child.

Fourth Episode [Lines 1106–1228]

Enter a flustered messenger, fellow slave of the Chorus of Creusa's Handmaidens. He urgently wants to find the Queen. He has looked all over town for her. The Chorus want to know why. The Messenger tells them that the rulers of Delphi are looking for her. They want to have her stoned to death. Has their plot to kill the boy been found out?  The Messenger tells them that it has and they will be punished too. the Chorus ask how.

Messenger:

It was the god Apollo who found this out. After the queen's husband and the boy [his new-found son] had left the temple they went to make a sacrifice to the gods of birth on the heights of the Parnassos, by sprinkling the blood of slaughtered beasts in a rite over the twin crags of Dionysos, high up and overlooking Delphi on the peaks known as the Shining Rocks, as they glow in the sunlight during the day and flicker with torches by night. Before ascending to the top, the father told the boy to wait there and to organise the workmen to start erecting the marquee for the banquet. The father then rounded up a few heiffers for the sacrifice and took off with them up the mountain. Before leaving he told the boy not to wait for him as he might be back late, but to begin the celebrations without him if necessary.

The boy then started to raise the marquee, erecting first its frame and poles, and then the guy ropes to hold them in place. Once the frame was fully up skins were stretched over it. The marquee was not what might be called a tent, but was more of being a pavilion, for it was huge, spacious enough to accommodate all of the people of Delphi, 100 πούς [feet] in length on each side of a plethron square. It was oriented so that all of those inside it could escape the blaze of the midday sun, but also arranged to capture the glory of the setting sun in the west.

To furnish the marquee special woven tapestries and drapes were fetched from the secret cache of treasure hidden in Apollo's temple. Works of the loom, the wonder of the world, spoils of war with the Amazons taken by Heracles and dedicated by him to Apollo. These were hung over the roof poles. They were decorated with many designs. When opened up these drapes formed the canopy of the space inside the marquee providing a panoply of the celestial heavens at night, with Uranus mustering all the stars in circles around the Polestar, together with a depiction of Helios driving his horses bearing the Sun and dragging it away to set in the west, closely followed by Hesperus [the Evening Star or the planet Venus]. Across the rest of the caonopy the chariot of the night rode forth, with the stars clinging to it. There were the Pleiades, and Orion too with his sword. And Arctus the bear [Ursa Major] with its tail wrapped around the Polestar as it revolved around it. And the face of the white Moon, that which  divides the months of the calendar.  And the Hyades too, they which guide the mariners at sea. And finally all of them being chased away by the Sun's dawn rays.

Round the sides of the marquee were tapestries of oriental design, with depictions of Greek ships and the ships of the Asian powers with their barbarian ships bearing down upon the Greek fleet; monsters which were half-beast and half-human; the capture of Thracian steeds; the hunting of a chase of deer by fierce and wild lions. While at the entrance to the marquee was an image of Cecrops coiled with his serpent's tail and his daughters. And in the middle of the banqueting area was set a table with goblets of gold.

As soon as the banqueting marquee was finished and ready to be used, a herald  hastened to the town to invite any and all those [males] native to Delphi to come to the celebratory feast if they so wished. Those of the many that came decked themselves with garlands and took their fill of the rich fare that was there. After they had put from them the pleasure of eating. 

There in the midst of them there came an old man whose officious manner and zeal serving drinks made them all laugh. He would draw water from the pitchers which were meant for drinking and serve it to the guests to wash their hands. And wastefully he swung censers of burning incense throughout the marquee. All this as he busied himself serving wine to the guests in the golden goblets like the veritable clown of a butler he was behaving as.

Now when it came to the time for the auletes to play and general libations to be made, suddenly this old man ordered all the small golden goblets to be removed and replaced with large drinking bowls, so that the guests could become intoxicated faster. To the boy [Ion] whose celebration this feast was in honour of  the old man brought a large bowl of wine, but one which he had laced with the poison from the bracelet he was carrying, the poison that Creusa had given him to kill Ion with.  Then just as everyone was ready with their bowls raised to drink a toast one of servants made an inauspicious remark. Trained amongst the professional diviners in the temple as he was, interpreting the remark as bad luck Ion immediately ordered all his guests to empty the content of their drinking bowls onto the ground. Just as they all did so a group of temple doves flew into the marquee and started pecking at the ground. They all had their fill, except that dove  which had pecked at the ground where Ion had poured his wine. It hobbled for a moment and died in a most gruesome manner.

Ion immediately realised that someone had tried to poison him. Who was it? The old man, of course, who had served him the wine. Ion ordered the old man seized; he was searched and the  bracelet with the poison was found on him. The old man was tortured and confessed to the crime, telling Ion that it was Creusa who had plotted his assassination with him. A foreign born woman had schemed his death, and attempted to kill Apollo's own temple boy.

Ion together with all his guests got up from their places and went in search of the magistrates [rulers] in charge of Delphi. A court was summoned and by majority vote they elected to have Creusa executed, she immediately to be taken to a high precipice and thrown down into a ravine onto the rocks to dash her to death. She had attempted to kill a servant of the Lord Apollo's temple, and defile his sanctuary with blood. A hue and cry was set up to find her. 

All hope to have children she has lost and her own life too.

Exit the Messenger.

Lyric Interlude [Lines 1229–1249]
This long message has made the Chorus panic. They sing a lament. They are frightened for their mistress and scared for their own lives too, all at the hands of the Delphian mob.

"Poor mistress, what lies in wait for your spirit? Does it mean those who attempt to damage another's life must rightly suffer?"

Exodos [Lines 1250–1622]

Enter Creusa [disguised]

Creusa asks her Chorus of Handmaidens what can she do. They advise her to flee into the temple and seek sanctuary by the altar: religion forbids the slaying of a suppliant in a sanctuary. She says she is already dead by legal process. The Chorus replies they must take her first: hurry on in. Creusa seats herself at the place of sacrifice.

Ion enters with armed men and a crowd of Delphians.

He tells his guard to seize her and take her to the top of Parnassos' cliff, where she is to be hurled from the top to bound from rock to rock to her death. He is happy that all this has happened before he reached Athens, where he would have been at the mercy of his stepmother. He goes up to her and accosts her. But he realises she is sitting on the altar. 

Ion to his followers: "Look how the wretch has made the god's own altar her refuge from the penalty of her crime!"

"Seize her."  They hesitate.

Creusa: Touch not my life ! I charge thee for myself and for the god upon whose ground we are!

Ion: Phoebus and you? What link is there between you?

Creusa: I have given up my body to the god, in trust to keep. 

Ion rages against the ancient laws that prevent him from killing Creusa right there and then.

At this juncture the prophetess-priestess of Apollo's temple at Delphi enters.

She is known as The Pythia. She is the one who delivers Apollo's oracles whilst in a trance sitting on a tripod inside the temple. She is carrying a small wicker basket, a cradle for a newborn baby. It is tied up with white wollen ribbons.

Ion calls her mother (although not his real mother as she is a virgin). She tells Ion to stop trying to arrest Creusa, that she alone decides what the rules regarding sanctuary are in this her temple. Ion tells her that Creusa had hatched a plot to have him killed. The Pythia reminds him that he is also sinning by his actions of trying to break the ancient customs of sanctuary. Ion asks ought not murder be met with murder? The Pythia tells him stepmothers are always harsh to their stepchildren. Ion remarks so ought we not to be so to our stepmothers in return, especially when they treat them badly? The Pythia tells him that he has to go to Athens with unsallied hands, clean of any blood. Ion tells her that a man becomes "clean" by killing his enemies. The Pythia tells Ion he is wrong about this. 

The Pythia tells Ion that he must first listen to a tale she has to relate. She shows him the wicker cradle. She says this is his.  Ion asks why has it been kept hidden from him for so long, that he had never seen it before. She replies that Apollo wanted him first to serve him in his shrine, and that Apollo had now assigned to him a father and that it is time now for him to leave Delphi. The Pythia tells Ion that Apollo speaks to her internally in riddles [slanted light], and that Ion must now listen to her. She explains that this was the basket she had found him in as a newborn babe, on the entrance steps to the temple many years previously. That all this has been kept a secret from him. Apollo had sworn The Pythia to silence about all his. In the cradle, she explains, are still the swaddling clothes she had found him wrapped up in. She tell Ion that in the cradle are the clues to who his true and real mother is, that there are some items within by which he may identify her.

Creusa still clinging to the altar suddenly thinks she has seen this cradle before. Ion tells The Pythia that he will search all of Greece and Asia for her. The Pythia gives the cradle to Ion. Before she leaves she advises Ion to search all of Delphi first before trying the rest of Hellas in his quest for the young maiden who might have left him on the steps to Apollo's shrine. In his curiosity he begins to think who and what she might be.

Exit The Pythia into the Temple.

Ion laments:
Alas, alas! How flow mine eyes with tears to think of that sad hour, when she, who bare, put me, the fruit of her disgrace, away unsuckled from her breast, a nameless waif, to live upon a temple’s charity.

Ion loosens the ribbons and carefully opens the basket. In it are three items: a woven aegis, golden snakes, and an olive wreath. Creusa recognises them all. Suddenly she leaves the sanctuary of the altar to which she has been clinging and rushes to hug Ion. Ion immediately orders the guards to arrest her.

Creusa explains to Ion to his satisfaction by correctly identifying all three items and their provenance that it was she, her very self, who had left him in this cradle. That the Aegis bears the image of a Gorgon with a ring of snakes, that if it was crudely done it was because she had woven it as a young maiden in memory of her ancestor Erichthonius. The next item was a talisman bearing the image of two snakes with jaws of gold hung round the necks of newborn babies as protection against the evil eye, a customary charm as used by her people; this particular one was a copy of the one that had been given to her ancestors by Athena herself. The third item was the evergreen wreathe made from an olive branch, woven by herself from the olive tree first brought to Athens by Athena herself.

Ion has a moment of realisation who Creusa is.

Ion {throwing himself into Creusa's arms): My mother, O my mother !...0 blessed joy to kiss thee, happy face to happy face!...

Creusa: My child, my light, my day (the blessed sun forgives me!) Found! Here in my very arms! Found! And I thought thee dead, I thought thee dead, gone to the Queen of the Dead, to her dark realm under the ground !

 Enter Athena [Deus ex Machina?]

She tells the people not to be scared. She is from Athens where she is known as Athena Pallas. She has come to complete her errand. She tells Ion that she has come from Apollo who it seems was too embarassed to appear. She tells him that indeed that his real father truly was Apollo. That Apollo's aim was to keep this a secret for a while, and to reveal the truth after they had gone back to Athens.

Athena tells Creusa to take Ion back to Athens and set him up to rule there as king, as he is that by lawful right and the true descendant of Erectheus. He will give birth to four sons each of whom will give their names to the four quarters and traditional tribal shires of Athens [the Phyles]: Geleon, Hopletes, Argades and Aegicores. In time and in turn his sons' descendants will plant themselves in the towns and the coasts of the mainland, and the islands across the main, and those beyond the seas in Asia shall style themselves Ionian in his honour. And to Creusa and Xuthus will be born two further sons: Dorus who gives his name to the Dorians, and Achaeus giving his name to the Achaeans, the people habiting the land of Pelops.

Ion declares to Athena that he now believes himself to be the son of Apollo and Creusa.

Athena says that this must now be kept a secret from Xuthus and tells Ion and Creusa to come back with her to Athens.

The Chorus conclude the play with the line "Justice cometh in the end!"

And exeunt all

References

Ion (play) - Wikipedia

Ion (mythology) - Wikipedia

Delphi - Wikipedia

Agyieus - Wikipedia

Omphalos of Delphi - Wikipedia

Castalian Spring - Wikipedia

Plethron - Wikipedia

Cecrops - GreekMythology.com

Erichthonius - GreekMythology.com

The Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi – Travel Europe Blog

Mimas - GreekMythology.com

Erechtheus - GreekMythology.com

Aegis - GreekMythology.com

Aegis - Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquity

The Gods of the Greeks (Gorgons): Kerenyi, C - Internet Archive

Athena - Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War - GreekMythology.com

Hercules' Second Labor: the Lernean Hydra - Perseus Digital Library

Ion - Euripides - Ancient Greece - Classical Literature

Ion by Euripides - GreekMythology.com

Euripides: Ion (Ἴων) - - Major Reference Works - Wiley Online Library

Hale, John R., et al. “Questioning the Delphic Oracle.” Scientific American, vol. 289, no. 2, 2003, pp. 66–73. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26060404

Thornburn, John E. “APOLLO'S COMEDY AND THE ENDING OF EURIPIDES' ‘ION.’” Acta Classica, vol. 44, 2001, pp. 221–236. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24595365

Jones, Gregory S. “The Sculptural Poetics of Euripides' Ion: Reflections of Art, Myth, and Cult from the Parthenon to the Attic Stage.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 88, no. 4, 2019, pp. 727–762. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.88.4.0727

MARTIN, GUNTHER. “ON THE DATE OF EURIPIDES' ION.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 2, 2010, pp. 647–651. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40984838

Donald J. Mastronarde; Iconography and Imagery in Euripides' "Ion". California Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 January 1975; 8 163–176. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25010688

Patricia A. Watson (1995). Ancient Stepmothers: Myth, Misogyny and Reality. BRILL. ISBN 90-04-10176-4.

Bernard C. Dietrich, « Divine Madness and Conflict at Delphi », Kernos [Online], 5 | 1992, URL : http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/1047 ; DOI : 10.4000/kernos.1047

Athens in a Basket: Naming, Objects, and Identity in Euripides' Ion mueller_ion.pdf

Wolff, Christian. “The Design and Myth in Euripides' Ion.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 69, 1965, pp. 169–194. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/310782

Young, Rodney S. “ANTIΠ HΞ : A Note on the Ion of Euripides.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 10, no. 2, 1941, pp. 138–142. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/146537

Gentrifying geneology : on the genesis of the Athenian autochthony myth
Blok, J.H. (2009) Antike mythen : medien, transformationen und konstruktionen, pp. 251 - 275
https://bit.ly/3pj3kaz

Anthesteria  - The More Ancient Dionysia

Greek Versions

Teubner - Ion - Euripides

Euripides, Ion - Perseus Digital Library

Euripides (17 October 2019). Euripides: Ion. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-62741-2.

Euripides (1891). The Ion. Macmillan.

Translations

The Ion of Euripides - Internet Archive translated by A.W. Verall

The Plays of Euripides (Coleridge)/Ion - Wikisource

The Internet Classics Archive | Ion by Euripides

Ion, by Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray - Project Gutenberg

Audio-Visual

The Center for Hellenic Studies - Ion by Euripides