Chorus Leader
Alas, what a mighty treasury of ills is opened; anyone might weep at it!
Tutor
[925]
My daughter, I cannot get my fill of looking on your face; I am astonished. For I had just now drained one wave of troubles from my heart, when another one from the stern seizes me at your words, which you have diverted from the present woes,
[930]
and now you have set forth on a sad road of other sorrows. What are you saying? What charge do you bring against Loxias? What son do you say you have brought forth? and where in the city did you place his body, dear to the wild beasts? Please go through it again.
Creusa
I am ashamed, old man, yet I will speak.
Tutor
[935]
I know how to mourn generously with friends.
Creusa
Hear then; you know the cave to the north of the Cecropian rocks, which we call Macrai?
Tutor
Yes, where there is a shrine to Pan and altars near by.
Creusa
There I engaged in a dreadful contest.
Tutor
[940]
What contest? How my tears come to meet your words!
Creusa
Unwillingly, I formed an unhappy union with Phoebus.
Tutor
O daughter, was this what I have heard?
Creusa
I don't know; but I would tell you if you speak the truth.
Tutor
You were secretly mourning a hidden disease?
Creusa
[945]
This was the grief I am now making clear to you.
Tutor
And then how did you conceal Apollo's rape?
Creusa
I gave birth . . . hear me with patience, old man.
Tutor
Where? Who assisted you at the birth? Or were you in labor alone?
Creusa
Alone, in the cave where I had been joined with him.
Tutor
[950]
Where is the child? so that you may no longer be childless.
Creusa
He is dead, old man, exposed to wild beasts.
Tutor
Dead? And the cowardly Apollo did not defend him?
Creusa
He did not; the boy is growing up in the house of Hades.
Tutor
Who exposed him? Surely it wasn't you.
Creusa
[955]
I did it, in darkness, wrapping him in robes.
Tutor
And no one shared in your knowledge of the child's exposure?
Creusa
Only the misfortune and the concealment.
Tutor
And how did you dare to leave your son in a cave?
Creusa
How? With many mournful words.
Tutor
[960]
Ah! Cruel was your daring, but the god was more cruel than you.
Creusa
If you had seen the child stretch out his hands to me!
Tutor
Seeking the breast, or reaching for your arms?
Creusa
Here, where he suffered wrong from me, being absent from my arms.
Tutor
And what thought induced you to expose your child?
Creusa
[965]
That the god would save his own offspring.
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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.
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