Book Description

Ion is one of Euripides' most appealing and inventive plays. With its story of an anonymous temple slave discovered to be the son of Apollo and Creusa, an Athenian princess, it is a rare example of Athenian myth dramatized for the Athenian stage. It explores the Delphic Oracle and Greek piety; the Athenian ideology of autochthony and empire; and the tragic suffering and longing of the mythical foundling and his mother, whose experiences are represented uniquely in surviving Greek literature. The plot anticipates later Greek comedy, while the recognition scene builds on a tradition founded by Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Oresteia. The introduction sets out the main issues in interpretation and discusses the play's contexts in myth, religion, law, politics, and society. By attending to language, style, meter, and dramatic technique, this edition with its detailed commentary makes Ion accessible to students, scholars, and readers of Greek at all levels.