About the work
Ion is a tragicomedy by Euripides, first staged in Athens around 413 BC. The play relocates the myth of the ancestor of the Ionians to Apollo's temple at Delphi and combines it with a pointed critique of the gods' responsibility for human suffering.
Plot
Ion grows up as a temple servant at Delphi, unaware that he is the son of the Athenian princess Creusa, who years earlier was raped by Apollo and forced to secretly abandon the child. When Creusa and her childless husband Xuthus consult the oracle, it tells Xuthus that the first man he meets on leaving the temple will be his son — and that man is Ion. Not knowing this, a jealous Creusa plots to kill the supposed stranger, but is discovered in time; mother and son then recognise each other through tokens from the basket in which he was exposed, and in the end the goddess Athena confirms Apollo as Ion's true father.
Cultural significance
Despite its reconciling ending, the play does not soften Apollo's assault on Creusa and so openly questions the legitimacy of divine conduct. Its basic structure — a seduced mother, an exposed foundling, and a final triumphant recognition — became a model for later Attic New Comedy, notably Menander, where a fallible mortal father takes the god's place.