Ion

Ion is a surviving play by Euripides, one of the three great tragedians of ancient Greece, generally dated to the late fifth century BC. The story takes place at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: Ion, an orphan raised in the temple since childhood and charged with sweeping and serving, has never known his parentage and regards himself merely as a servant of the god. Creusa, Queen of Athens, comes to the temple with her husband Xuthus to inquire about offspring, and encounters Ion; a long-buried past is thus revealed—in her youth she was taken by force by Apollo and abandoned the child she bore. Through the gradual unfolding of recognition and oracle, the play stages both a reunion and scenes in which Creusa and Ion in turn ask: has a god the right thus to dispose of mortal fates? Euripides is famed for bringing ordinary daily life onto the stage and for deep psychological portrayal; in this play the grief of Creusa and the bewilderment of Ion are especially finely and movingly drawn, and it is regarded as one of the representative Greek tragedies treating the relation between myth and human ethics. This volume is the separate edition of Ion from the Wenjing Classics·Famous Translations Illustrated Edition of The Tragedies of Euripides, translated by Zhou Zuoren from the Greek text edited by A. S. Owen (Oxford edition), with notes and illustrations.