Xuthus
[650]
No more of these words; learn how to be successful. I wish to begin where I found you, my son, with a public table, providing a general feast, and to hold the sacrifices which I did not make at your birth. And now I will bring you as a guest at my table and cheer you with the banquet,
[655]
then lead you to Athens as a pretended visitor, not as my son. For I do not want to grieve my wife, who is childless, while I am fortunate. I will seize the right occasion and induce my wife
[660]
to let you hold the scepter of the land together with me. Ion I name you, as befits your fortune, since you were the first to meet me as I came out ot the god's shrine. But assemble a full number of your friends, greet them at the sacrifice with pleasure,
[665]
since you will soon leave the city of Delphi. And you, slaves, I tell you to be silent on these matters, or it will be death for those that tell my wife.
Ion
I will go. But one part of my fortune is lacking; if I do not find my mother,
[670]
my life will not be endurable, father. If it is right to pray for it, my mother would be an Athenian, so that from her I might have freedom to speak my mind. For one who bursts as a stranger into a city unmixed in race, even if he is called a citizen,
[675]
must keep a slavish mouth closed, and does not feel free to speak.
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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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