Oh! thy happy tidings, if thy story is true.CreusaAnd about thee as swaddling-clothes I fastened this my maiden work, the faulty efforts of my loom. But to my breast I never held thy lips, or suckled or washed thee with a mother’s care; but in a desert cave wert thou cast out to die, for taloned kites to rend and feast upon.IonAn awful deed! O mother!CreusaFear held me captive, and I cast thy life away, my child; I would, though loth, have slain thee too.IonThou too wert all but slain by me most impiously.CreusaO the horror of all I suffered then! O the horror of what is to follow now! To and fro from bad to good we toss, though now the gale is shifting round. May it remain steady! the past brought sorrows enough; but now hath a fair breeze sprung up, my son, to waft us out of woe.

ChorusLet no man ever deem a thing past hoping for, when he turns an eye towards what is happening now.IonO Fortune! who ere now hast changed the lot of countless mortals first to grief, and then to joy again, to what a goal my life had come, even to staining my hands with a mother’s blood and enduring sufferings ill-deserved! Ah well! may we not learn these truths daily in all that the bright sun embraces? O mother, in thee have I made a happy discovery, and from my point of view there is no fault to find with my birth; but what remains I fain would speak to thee apart. Come hither, for I would say a word in thine ear, and o’er these matters cast the veil of silence. Bethink thee, mother, carefully; didst thou make the fatal slip, that maidens will, as touching secret amours, and then upon the god wouldst foist the blame, in thy anxiety to escape the shame of my birth asserting that Phoebus is my sire, albeit the god was not the parent.CreusaNay, by our queen of Victory, Athena, that fought by Zeus, in days gone by, high on his car against the earth-born giants I swear, no mortal is thy father, my son, but King Loxias himself who brought thee up.IonHow then is it he gave his own child to another father, declaring that I was begotten of Xuthus?CreusaBegotten he never said, but as a gift he doth bestow thee his own son on him; for friend might give to friend even his own son to rule his house.IonMother mine, this thought disturbs my breast, as well it may, whether the god speaks truth or gives an idle oracle.CreusaHear, then, my son, the thought that hath occurred to me; Loxias out of kindness is establishing thee in a noble family, for hadst thou been called the god’s son, thou hadst never inherited a father’s home and name. How couldst thou, when I strove to hide my marriage with him and would have slain thee privily?But he for thy interest is handing thee over to another father.IonNot thus lightly do I pursue the inquiry; nay, I will enter Apollo’s shrine and question him whether I am the child of a mortal sire or his own son. Ha! who is that hovering o’er the incense-smoking roof, and showing to our gaze a heavenly face, bright as the sun? Let us fly, mother, that we see not sights divine, unless haply it is right we should.AthenaFly not! I am no foe ye seek to shun, but alike in Athens and this place your kindly friend. ’Tis I, Pallas, after whom your land is named, that am here, by Apollo sent in headlong haste; for he thought not fit to appear before you twain, lest his coming might provoke reproaches for the past; but me he sends to proclaim to you his words, how that this is thy mother, and Apollo thy sire; while thyself he doth bestow, as seems him good, not indeed on him that begat thee, nay, but that he may bring thee to a house of high repute. For when this matter was brought to light, he devised a way of deliverance,fearing that thou wouldst be slain by thy mother’s wiles and she by thine. Now it was King Apollo’s wish to keep this matter secret awhile, and then in Athens to acknowledge this lady as thy mother and thyself as the child of her and Phoebus. But to end the business and discharge his oracles for the god,