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Title: Ion (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) by Euripides, Peter Burian, W. S. Di Piero ISBN: 0-19-509451-4 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Euripides exposes Apollo, the God of Truth, as a liar
Comment: "Ion" is one of many plays by Euripides in which he tried to show his Athenian audience what the gods were liked when judged by ordinary human standards. In this play, Apollo, the god of truth, brutally rapes a helpless young girl, Creusa, and then abandons her. Creusa has a son, whom she abandons in a cave; when she goes back to find the child, he is gone. Years later she marries Xuthus, a solider of fortune who becomes king of Athens. At the start of the play Xuthus and Creusa are childless and go to Delphi for aid. There they are told that Ion, a young temple servant who has been raised from infancy, is the son of Xuthus. Creusa, outraged that Apollo let their own son die but preserved the life of a child begotten by Xuthus on some Delphian woman, tries to have Ion killed. Of course, in reality, Ion is her own child, abandoned in that cave. Condemned to death by the Delphians, Creusa escapes Ion's vengeance by taking refuge at Apollo's altar. There the priestess presents the tokens that allow Creusa to recognize Ion as her own son. Telling him the truth about his father, Ion tries to enter the temple to demand of Apollo the truth.
There is debate over how much "Ion" reflects the noted skepticism of Euripides. After all, we can certainly believe that Creusa was raped by a human and that he child died in that cave and that the priestess who bore Ion was simply setting up a convenient fiction that would make her son the prince of Athens. However, I have always taken "Ion" as being one of the best examples of Euripides's cynical view of the gods the Greeks were supposed to be worshipping. Athena forestalls a confrontation between Ion and Apollo, but this particular example of deus ex machina certainly rings hollow. After all, Delphi is Apollo's holy place and if Athena's words are true, he should be there to reveal the truth to his son instead.
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Title: Philoctetes by Carl Phillips, Diskin Clay, E. A. Sophocles ISBN: 0195136578 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Plays and Fragments (Penguin Classics) by Menander, Norma Miller ISBN: 0140445013 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Odyssey by Homer, Robert Fagles, Bernard Knox ISBN: 0140268863 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 29 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Protagoras and Meno (Penguin Classics) by Plato, W.K.C. Guthrie ISBN: 0140440682 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1957 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Opera for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book.) by Ron David, Paul Gordon ISBN: 0863160867 Publisher: Writers & Readers Pub. Date: January, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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