Ion (789-875)

Ah me! my fate, it seems, has doomed me to a childless

life, and all forlorn am I to dwell in ray halls, without an heir.

To whom did the oracle refer? whom did our poor lady’s husband meet? how and where did he see him?

Dear mistress mine, dost know that youth

that was sweeping yonder shrine? He is that son.

Oh! for wings to cleave the liquid air beyond the land of Hellas, away to the western stars, so keen the anguish of my soul, my friends!

Dost know the name his father gave to him, or is that left as yet unsettled and unsaid?

He called him Ion, because he was the first to cross his path.

Who is his mother?

That I cannot say. But,—to tell thee all I know, old sir,—

her lord is gone, with furtive step, into the hallowed tent, there to offer on this child’s behalf such gifts and victims as are offered for a birth, and with his new-found son to celebrate the feast.

Mistress mine, we are betrayed by thy husband, fellow-sufferers thou and I; ’tis a deep-laid plot to outrage us

and drive us from Erechtheus’ halls. And this I say not from any hatred of thy lord but because I bear thee more love than him; for he, after coming as a stranger to thy city and thy home, and wedding thee, and of thy heritage taking full possession,

has been detected in a secret marriage with another woman, by whom he hath children. His secret will I now disclose; when he found thee barren, he was not content to share with thee thy hard lot, but took to himself a slave to be his stealthy paramour

and thus begat a son, whom he sent abroad, giving him to some Delphian maid to nurse; and, to escape detection, the child was dedicated to the god and reared in his temple. But when he heard his boy was grown to manhood, he persuaded thee to come hither to inquire about thy childless state.

And after this, ’twas not the god that lied, but thy husband, who long had been rearing the child, and he it was that wove this tissue of falsehood, intending, if he were detected, to refer it to the god, whereas if he escaped exposure, to repel all odium, he meant to vest the sovereignty in this son of his.

Likewise he devised anew his name, coined to suit the circumstances, Ion, because, as he asserts, he met him on his way.

Ah! how I ever hate the wicked

who plot unrighteousness and then cunningly trick it out. Far rather would I have a virtuous friend of no great intellect than a knave of subtler wit.

Of all thy wretched fate this will be the crowning sorrow, the bringing to thy house to be its lord some slave-girl’s child, whose mother is unknown, himself of no account. For this evil had been to itself confined,

had he persuaded thee, pleading thy childlessness, to let him establish in the house some high-born mother’s son; or if this had displeased thee, he ought to have sought a daughter of Aeolus in marriage. Wherefore must thou now put thy woman’s wit to work; either take the dagger, or by guile

or poison slay thy husband and his son, ere they deal out death to thee; since if thou spare him, thou wilt lose thy own life; for when two foes meet beneath one roof, one or the other must rue it.

Myself too am ready to share this labour with thee, and to help destroy the child when I have made my way into the chamber where he is furnishing the feast, and so repaying my masters for my maintenance I am willing either to die or still behold the light of life. ’Tis but a single thing that brands the slave with shame—

his name; in all else no upright slave is a whit worse than freeborn men.

I too, beloved mistress, am ready to share thy fate, be it death or victory.