Ion
Mother, let my father, since he is present here, also share the joy which I have given you.
Creusa
[1470]
O child, what are you saying? How I am convicted!
Ion
What have you said?
Creusa
You were born from another.
Ion
Ah me! You gave birth to me as a virgin's bastard?
Creusa
[1475]
My wedding rites had no torches or dances, child, when I bore you.
Ion
Alas! I am low-born. Mother, who was my father?
Creusa
May the Gorgon's slayer know—
Ion
Why have you said this?
Creusa
You, who sit on the hill
[1480]
where the olive grows, beside my cliffs—
Ion
What you say is treacherous and not clear to me.
Creusa
By the nightingale's rock, Apollo—
Ion
Why do you speak of Apollo?
Creusa
Led me in secret to his bed.
Ion
[1485]
Speak on; your words bring some joyful fortune to me.
Creusa
In the tenth month I bore you to Phoebus, with secret pangs.
Ion
What you are saying is very sweet, if you are speaking the truth.
Creusa
[1490]
I fitted around you these baby-clothes, the work of my flying shuttle, done when I was a girl, in secret from my mother. I did not offer you milk, nor a mother's nourishment from the breast, nor did I wash you; you were cast out on the deserted cave,
[1495]
a victim of the beaks of birds, and a feast for Hades.
Ion
Mother, you dared to do terrible things.
Creusa
Bound down by fear, my son, I cast your life away;
[1500]
unwillingly I killed you.
Ion
And I was about to kill you!
Creusa
Ah! dreadful was my fortune then, dreadful these things also; I am whirled here
[1505]
and there to misery, and back again to joy; but the wind is changing. Let it remain; the past evils are enough; now let there be a favoring breeze, after troubles, my son.
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Table of Contents:
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Ion, translated by Robert Potter. New York. Random House. 1938.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.