The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides' Ion

Author(s): George B. Walsh

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Hermes, 106. Bd., H. 2 (1978), pp. 301-315
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag
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 THE RHETORIC OF BIRTHRIGHT AND RACE
IN EURIPIDES' ION*

The Athenian people in antiquity believed that they were an indigenous

tribe, untroubled by migrations and invasions', and this belief is reflected in
their local legends of kings born from the earth itself, snake-like creatures
indigenous in a way that no ordinary human being could be 2. For an Athenian,
to be earthborn (yyev ) and indigenous (ocatoxrc6X&wv) was also to be well-born
(euyev4j), and so his national pride was tied closely to his sense of inherited
personal status: if his city was free of racial impurity, so was he3.
This doctrine of Athenian autochthony and its corollary, the individual's
noble birth, is an important issue for every character in Euripides' Ion. Ion
himself introduces it: he sees Creusa'snobility stamped in herphysical appearance
(238-240)4 and he marvels at her ancestry and the glory of her city (262).
In his eyes, her tears (24If.) and childlessness (6i9f.) are inconsistent with
her elevated status - the one surprises him (?e'kqaq V.'), and the other
seems unworthy or improper (ov yap ak,xoc, 6I9) 5. He has plainly assumed that
the well-born should be happy6.
Ion's impressionability on the subject of noble birth stems in part from
his personal history. He has been raised as a slave in the temple of Apollo,
and although he loves serving the god he hates his servile status (130ff., i8i ff.),
and longs for nothing so much as to discover himself free of it. When Xuthus
claims him as his son, Ion questions him relentlessly about his alleged paternity,
partly to be convinced that Xuthus is really his father, and partly to determine
whether his newly found origins are servile or free, legitimate or illegitimate
(530 ff., especially 545). Ion signals his acceptance of Xuthus simply by saying
#I have escaped servility<( (&xnz&puyM[kev -Z 80uTOv,556); only then does he
grudgingly consider that one should not disbelieve the god whom he worships
and who has given him his new father (Xx-@&cyoi3vot x ra rcv rlg06, 557).
Ion's snobbery here may be explained by his youth and inexperience, and
by his peculiar status as the god's slave. It seems designed only to evoke a mild
humor, but the attitude elsewhere in the play may be deadly. Ion's fictional
* The author wishes to acknowledgea deep dept to his colleagues Prof. Anne BURNETT
and Peter WHITE for instruction and advice in preparingthis paper.
1 Thuc. I, 2.4; Hdt. I, 56-58.
2 Erechtheus y
nysv worshipped by Athenians, Hdt. 8, 55; for Erichthonius, see
Eur. fr. 925 N2., Ion 268ff., 1427-1429; Cecrops,Ion ii63f., Apollod. 3, I4, I.
3 Plato, Menexenus 237b.
ACf. Eur. El. 550, where the significanceof physiognomy is rejected; by comparison,
Ion 238-240 seems to represent the naive view.
3 Perhaps Ion means that the blood of an eu'ysvig would most deserve preserving.
6 Cf. Helen 27 and 26I, cited by A. N. PIPPIN, Euripides' Helen: A Comedy of Ideas,
CP 55, I960, p. 152.

Hermes,106. Band, Heft 2 (1978) C) Franz Steiner VerlagGmbH, D-6200 Wiesbaden

302 GEORGE B. WALSH

relationship to Xuthus and an unnamed, perhaps servile (8I9, 837f.) Delphian

girl brings him into direct conflict with the Athenians. He has the status of a
slave at worst, and a foreigner at best, yet he is to be brought as a king to
Athens, a city peopled by the oc'o avsoh(v x (29; cf. 589f.), a pure city
(xmc&mp& no'r6, 673, I333) governed by the ancient race of Erechtheids (469)
whose pride of birth restricts even the private relationship between the queen
and her foreign husband: when Creusa speaks of Xuthus, she identifies him
first as an outsider, a foreign warrior who has captured her like a prize in
battle'. For Ion, who is himself exquisitely sensitive to questions of origin,
this means thathe can never expect equality at Athens, unless his mother
should be Athenian (673ff.: x40ocpv . . v. ?v r6v 7r'aJ 6VOG. . .
7r
ye aTta hoi5Xov7rbrart) and as a bastard he will be weak and despised
(593 f., including 594 deleted by VERRALL: 8O VO6a& XeXT-teVOe . . .CV'
,udvx'v). Ion is wrong only in underestimating the strictness of Athenian
exclusivity. The Chorus prays that no one may rule them but one of the
?UyevtrxL Erectheids (io6o), and it is assumed that Creusa, o& trv ?UeOCTpL8iV
YeYCa'ON(OV(IO73), will lay down her life beforethe foreignertakes power8.
The chief defender of Athenian purity is the old servant who accompanies
her, a humble relic of the legendary past who has been pedagogue to Erechtheus
himself (836-856). It is he who incites Creusa to murder her son, because as
Ion himself had pointed out, the boy is not only foreign, but base-born (839;
cf. 59I).
Creusa's attempt to murder Ion fails, but it has a happy outcome. Ion's
longing for his unknown mother and his fear of discovering some flaw in his
birth, the Athenians' anxiety to preserve the integrity of the Erechtheid
dynasty and Creusa's desperate need to find her son - all are satisfied as the
play ends. Creusahas her son, an Erechtheid the Athenians will welcome (I463;
see also I464ff. I573 f.), and the eponymous ancestor of the Ionians; and, far
from having to serve a foreign master, she will be, according to Athena's
prophecy, the parent of all Greek races. Ion has the two blessings he values
equally and above everything else, his mother in his arms and a lineage that
will not shame him; his earlier complaint is answered - the well-born do live
happily (I62I).

7 See Cedric H. WHITMAN, Euripides and the Full Circle of Myth, Cambridge, Mass.,
1974, pp. 89 and 94.
8 The text of 721 ff. is corrupt, but it seems to lament a iewvx6v &al3oX&v, which as it
applies to the action of the play may refer to Xuthus' and Ion's reach for power; cf. OWEN,
ed., Euripides' Ion, Oxford, I939, ad loc.
9 CPXOV ,U?voV a' e5PN,U, pTrep, -q5poiev, /xxal T6 y4voq oiuiv ie[rTO6v, c5 q?tv, -68e ...
(15I8f.): 6 qlLv seems boyishly sententious; chiasmus (cp(Xov... a' e?poUX . .. SUpO%ev ..
'r6 y&vogo68?v ,VT?r'6v) emphasizes the close connection between the two aspects of
Ion's new discovery.
 The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides'Ion 303

Because some modern commentators assume that the Athenian poet's

dramatic treatment of his native city must be naively and sincerely patriotic '0,
they tell us little about the theme of personal genealogy and Athenian racial
purity in the Ion. Reading the play as a celebration of Athenian superiority
and as a piece of propaganda favoring Athens' imperalistic ambitions11,they
seem to make no distinction between dramaturgy and the writing of political
tracts, and they discover a wealth of detailed references made by the poet to
the current events of his day. Recently, however, there has been a sharp reaction
to this approach, a late example of the New Criticism which sets aside the
data of history and concentrates instead on the internal meanings of the
dramatic work'2. But we wish neither to limit our view of the poetic so that
it excludes the historical, nor of the historical so that we find in Euripides
nothing but a simple political program. The topical themes of the Ion, which
concern the political life of the Athenians and their status in the Greek world
in a period of war, must evoke responses in the audience that will be determined
by their particular place in history. To understand these, we must be more
than usually careful to read what seem to be political statements without
prejudging them. They must be read in context, to be sure, but the first
context to be considered is the play's - we need to know what the poet has
given us before we may decide how his audience understood it. Then, in the
context of the times, we shall want to know not only what the Athenians
were sure of, but what they argued and worried about - questions a poet might
address if he hopes to say something significant to his audience. One weakness
of the patriotic reading of the Ion is its triviality.
The play qualifies doctrines of personal and national purity with the
characterization of the actors who espouse them. The old pedagogue, the
play's chief champion of autochthony, is a satirical figure, a caricature of
the Euripidean type of faithful servant 3. Fussiness about breeding is the
10 See, for example, most readings of the ode *to Athens in Medea (824 ff.), of the Supp.
and Hcld. The chief proponents of the patriotic reading of the Ion are GRPGOTRE, ed. and
trans. Euripide III, Paris, I923, Pp. T55ff., especiallv i64-I72, and DELEBECQUE,
Euripide et la Guerre Peloponnese, Paris, 195I, especially p. 229: *La tragedie degage
en effet une veritable tlb6orie du racisme .. .*
11GRAGOIRE, p. I65: oC'est la justification mythologique, ou si l'on veut, historique, de
l'empire ionien d'Athenes ... .
12 Max IMHOF, for example, regards Ion's speech on the political life of the Athenians
(585-647) as psychologically motivated by his loilging for his mother (Euripides' Ion. Eine
literarische Studie, Bern, I966, P. 3I). For a similar development of extreme views ili
interpreting Shakespeare's topical meaning, see David BEVINGTON, Tudor Drama and
Politics, Cambridge, Mass., I968, pp. iff.
13 As OWEN suggests (ad 725 ff., p. 12I), the pedagogue here resembles the old man in
the Electra. Electra's servant, however, keeps his place even when he clearly knows better
than his mnasterswhat their situation is; he makes no exaggerated claims to equality with
the children of Agamemnon, and his loyalty to them is something so sure he need never

Hermes 106, 2 20
304 GEORGE B. WALSH

motif that announces his presence in the play (ou x%OtcLyU-VOCO' C7x?L4 / t0ou
aoi) 7tBOCaLOu, zxyOvoUq tX6Oovocq,736f.), yet he is a slave himself.
Although he passionately condemns Ion's servile origin (xocalTc&v' &'&aVatv
e'rzCt0ov 1aL' xaxov .. . '... .x 8o0-q rLVOq/ yuvcxLXOq, 'q a6v M@Focaeo6-
rr/ &ytv, 836ff.), he believes that in his own case the qualities of an ?aX6
and the status of a free man may be won by the spirit regardless of birth
(y' YOS o 3o6VLa aOxv'nv pp
T'TO louvo,uc,854-856)'4. This humble
creature's spiritual union with the great, however, is the occasion for a
conspiracy to murder Ion, and in this his closest kin is Phaedra's nurse who,
like him, prides herself upon a loyalty to her mistress that we know to be rui-
nous and without conscience. Creusa's old man concocts a paranoid fantasy
that Xuthus plots to expel her from Athens (8ogff.), that Xuthus has fathered
Ion in a slave's bed after marrying Creusa,has raised him secretly and contrived
their present trip to Delphi so that he may pretend to discover Ion by accident.
When Creusa tells the old man about her encounter with Apollo, he suggests
first that they burn the god's shrine (974); failing that - it seems not to matter
who is the victim - he advises her to murder Xuthus (976). Finally, they
resolve to kill Ion (978ff.), a plan the old man justifies with the sophistic claim
that expedience takes precedence over right (I045ff.):15

Y 8V eUacipLocV eUTUXOUmlpLv XCX0v

TLVL5V QO'V 8' 7rO?VAOU4apoCaoct XOCXG()
t&k rL4, ouv8Lq ?el7MOs V XLCXL v6o?oq.

There is a superficial similarity between the old man and his intended
victim that underscores their utter disparity. They are both slaves; one is
anxious to escape his condition, the other claims that he has done so in spirit'6.
But Ion, who is ignorant of his noble birth, unconsciously shows his nobility,

proclaim it loudly as Creusa's pedagogue does his. Both old men, on the other hand, suffer
from the weakness of age, and both are inspired by their devotion to their masters to
instigate murderous plots.
14 For this sentiment, see also 8o8 and 935; the old man's views should not be confused
with the similar, but comic and harmless ones expressed by the messenger in the Helen
(728 ff.). The messenger's claim to be free in mind if not in name is onlv one of many variations
in that play on the theme of appearance opposed to reality. The Helen's spiritual redefinition
of status and worth achieves a comic climax when one of Theoclymenus' servants teaches
him religion, inverting the social order (I630). See also frgs. 52, 5II, 83I.
15 Cf. Thuc. 6, 85, I.
16 Ion and the old man also share a Euripidean view of the female potential for violence:
compare 6i6ff. and 843ff. Both argue in the sophistic manner xoc'r&o 'I x6q (C. WOLFF,
The Design and Myth in Euripides' Ion, HSCP 69, I965, p. I84 and n. 27), but only the
pedagogue espouses sophistic morality (J. FINLEY, Euripides and Thucydides, HSCP 49,
1938, P. 37, commenting on Ion 585-620). For another practitioner of sophistic argumen-
tation who is far from the sophistic moral position, cf. Hippolytus.
 The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides' Ion 305

while the pedagogue behaves truly like a slave. He is portrayed from an aristo-
crat's point of view, as an upstart like Thersites in Iliad B, whose unfounded
claims to equality with the well-born provide only one more proof of his
inferiority. The old man claims moral equality with his masters, but since he
is himnselfamoral, his pretension simply betrays his ignorance of virtue. But
by introducing a standard of spiritual as opposed to genetic nobility, and then
falling short of it, he acts as a foil for Ion, who is euyevq in both ways.
Ion is the true aristocrat, as the son of Creusa and Apollo should be. His
precocity and his penchant for reason and discourse suggest the youthful
enthusiast of Plato's dialogues'7. His morality is old-fashioned: the old man
distinguishes artificial social conditions from )>true((nature - his social status
from his real worth, and social inhibitions from expedience - but for Ion
Cp6uc and v6o,4owork together (643)18. His praise of quiet too marks him as
different from the old man, and, as many have noticed, as an aristocrat in
fifth century terms'9. Like Hippolytus in another of Euripides' plays, he
distrusts the life of the politician as an obstacle to virtue, particularly in a
of feara((6oi), where the
city like that of the Athenians, which is, he says, >>full
power of the great is hedged by votes and makes them the object of popular
hostility.
But the concept of a spiritual nobility that Ion comes to represent is not
fully formed at the start of the dramatic action. It develops with Ion's
experience of life as we observe it, and comes to replace a simple standard of
physical innocence and physical u veLO 2O. The word xoc1cap6q is related to
both of these notions. It describes the cleanliness of the temple Ion protects
as
it from the mess made by birds; used of race, it means unalloyed with foreign
or base blood (673). In both passages, xocDap6q signifies freedom from con-
tamination, and this simple meaning, extended to the moral realm, is the
basis for Ion's criticism of the law of sanctuary (I3I2f.): the fugitive should
not be allowed the protection of the altar, because ou8 . .. av'zv xoO6v /
C$v 7OV p&V zPO... (I3I5f.). Creusa expresses this view even more
forcefully in describing the magical drops she carries in two separate containers:
for her, good and evil simply do not mix (II7) 21: Focx . . . 6v ou CuYu?Lst-
yVUTXL.
17 See WOLFF, P. I74; F. M. WASSERMAN, Divine Violence and Providence in Euripides'
Ion, TAPA 71, I940, P. 593 on Ion 429ff., 585f., 13I2f.; and OWEN, xxvi.
18The allusion to contemporary philosophical debate here is surely playful.
19Ion 585-647; the XPilart . . . aLyO)L xou a=68ouav eL -qT 7rpOC&YTa'(598f.) and
the tyrant hates the &o4l(ot (628). According to EHRENBERG,Polypragmosune, JHS 67,
I947, and abpCyLOUv-nare in Thucydides >almost identical with being
p. 52, acocppoat$vY
a conservative and an enemy of the radical democrats. e Cf. passages cited by him (pp. 46-67)
and by FINLEY (above, n. i6), p. 34.
20On this see WHITMAN(above, n. 7), Chapt. III passim, especially 89ff.
21Cf. A. P. BURNETT,trans., Ion of Euripides, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1970, ad loc.

20*
306 GEORGEB. WALSH

But the naive demand for purity cannot be maintained in any of its guises,
either in the racial doctrine of Athenian autochthony, or as a religious standard
of value. It is consistently and subtly undermined throughout the play, by the
structure of the myth itself and by the poet's figurative treatment of it. Ion's
own birth from violence exemplifies the good that comes from evil. His mother
has been raped, and his blood is impure, but what contaminates it is the power
of the god. When the Pythia accepts him as a foundling at the temple despite
her shock at what she takes to be the mother's impiety in leaving him there
(43ff.), she lends Apollo's authority again the devaluation of strict propriety22.
The birds polluting the god's shrine that Ion has tried to kill become, by
warning him against the poisoned wine at Xuthus' banquet, the instrument of
his salvation, and guided by divine providence they blur the line between
sacred and profane. Finally, when Ion faces Creusaafter the attempted murder,
his strict adherence to an ideal of purity must be doubly confounded before
he mav learn the happy truth about himself. Mother and son have exchanged
roles: Creusa is now the hated foreigner, Ion the outraged native of Delphi
who obtains an official Delphian condemnation of the Athenian conspirator
(I222ff.). But Ion is rebuked by the Pythia for his self-righteous desire to kill
Creusa, and so must respect the law of sanctuary which strikes him as unclean.
This saves him from the twofold pollution of matricide and violation of
the altar. And as he hesitates to pursue the question of his birth for fear of
discovering something shameful and impure (4380ff.), he realizes that he must
abandon himself to the truth, whatever it may be. Creusa's example has
taught him that high birth does not always bring happiness (o y6voq ,u' oux
coypes?, 268), and Xuthus' offer of royal power has opened the prospect that
the great may not always live the life of the good (eaR6k, 620ff.). Now the
god requires that he put his lessons to use, and prefer piety to uncontaminated
parentage. When Ion chooses the truth, he will discover that his father is
Apollo and his mother a glorious Erechtheid queen, but the poet has made
this joyful event depend upon the hero's willingness to be basely born.
The Athenians have gained a king whose experience and character subvert
their racial exclusivity. In his indignation at the spectacle of a murderess
saved by the god's altar, when he defines the principle of purity simply as the
death of his enemies (x=c0ap6o&7a tot.
7COXqLT O 84 iv xa &f, 1334), Ion
flirts with the views of the pedagogue (cf. I045 ff.). But the old man fails in his
conspiracy by the god's intervention, and then disappears from stage, while
Ion remains to learn that nothing in life is unmixed and to relinquish by his own
choice the violent pursuit of purity. Since it is the pedagogue's failure, and the
moderation of his intended victim, that saves the Erechtheids, the attempt to
kill Ion cannot be read simply as a )>legitimateact of patriotic self-defense #23,

22 BURNETT ad 45 and I070. 28 GRAG0IRE, P. I7I.

 The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides'Ion 307

on the common presumption that Euripides must flatter Athenian pride. The
play does not oppose Athenian to foreigner, so that the audience may rejoice
at an Athenian victory, but human ignorance and naivet6 on one side, against
the wisdom to be found with the god's help on the other.
The play offers no positive model for naive exclusiveness, since Creusa's
flirtation with racism is explained by her confusion which has made her
vulnerable to the vicious influence of a slave. On the contrary, Athena's
prophecy satisfies Athenian racial pride only by enlarging the scope of Athenian
liberality: Xuthus, the genial foreigner in the queen's bed, makes Creusa the
mother of heroes and the entire Greek world the kin of the Athenians (I589ff.);
as Ion's children win the renown they are promised (1575 ff.), we may expect
that they will perpetuate their father's spirit. Thus, Euripides seems not to
encourage his audience to maintain the narrow vision from which the royal
family has fortunately escaped. To discover more precisely how the Ion
may have been understood by fifth century spectators, we must consider its
historical context and the variety of intellectual and political trends that it
reflects.
There is nothing historically improbable in the stage Athenians' reluctance
to see the Erechtheid throne occupied by a foreign bastard. The audience had
seen the numbers and importance of foreigners increasing daily in city life, and
they made repeated attempts to exlude them from full participation in their
political processes. The Ion echoes the language of their restrictive citizenship
laws: Pericles' decree of 45I excluded from citizenship those who were ry-
y'vEr sue)Xoc4h0po024.In legal language, v6o4o meant a person of half Athenian
and half foreign birth - technically Ion's position when he has Xuthus,
presumably made a citizen, for a father, but an unknown mother from Delphi 25.
Thus, in the play, Ion is concerned that he comes as a v6&oqto a xocaocp6q
city (592; cf. 673).
Euripides has exaggerated the contemporary problem of metic incursions
into Athenian social life by making the foreigner Ion threaten the integrity
of the ruling Erechtheid family. The furious, self-defensive response of the
Athenians in the play to Ion's new status is therefore also likely to be an
exaggerated or distorted reflection of contemporary Athenian attitudes
24 Arist. Ath. Pol. I3, 5; 26, 3; see A. R. W. HARRISON, The Laws of Athens, Vol. I,
Oxford, I968, P. 68, and C. HIGNETT, A History of the Athenian Constitution, Oxford,
1952, PP. 343 f.
26 Plut. Per. 37, 3; Dem. 23, 2I3. Ion might also be regarded as a v6o4o simply if his

parents were unmarried, and this would exlude him from certain rights of inheritance if
not from Athenian citizenship under laws in force at the time the Ion was produced:
see HIGNETT Ioc. cit., and Ar. Birds I649 ff. on Heracles as a v6,oq unable to inherit his
father's estate. On the question of legalized bigamy, and the possibility that Xuthus
might legally claim Ion as a legitimate son despite the fact that he is supposed to have
been born outside Xuthus' marriage to Creusa, see HARRISON 68 and HIGNETT 345.
308 GEORGE B. WALSH

toward metics. In fifth century terms, the role assigned to the pedagogue
also seems distorted by some design of the poet. Of all the dramatic characters
he is most fearful of Ion's accession to power, yet he is most lowly in rank
himself, and he is anxious to magnify his own status by claiming spiritual
equality with the great. It suits both his violent patriotism and his belief in
a virtue unlimited by social position that he should also espouse the doctrines
of Athens' imperialist demagogues, that Nomos falls before the need to harm
one's enemies (I046) 26. But this xenophobic, probably foreign slave who
masquerades as an extreme democrat does not correspond in any obvious
way to the fifth century Athenian: fifth century democrats seem to have
championed the cause of the metics, and the metics the cause of the democratic
faction27; the most dedicated defenders of Athenian racial purity appear to
have been conservatives 28. Hostility to foreigners may have crossed divisions
of class and political ideology in Euripides' audience29,but it was surely not a
sentiment associated with slaves. By making the pedagogue the champion of
autochthony, Euripides has placed hostility to foreigners at a lower social
level in the play than it might be found among his audience, and so made it
easier to reject.
There were strong forces, both practical and principled, favoring aliens
at Athens to which the Ion might address itself. Many of Athens' chief families
would be unable to claim autochthonous origins30, and according to one
fifth century version of early Attic history to be an indigenous Athenian meant
to be non-Greek, and so would not be a matter of pride31.To judge from the
speeches Thucydides ascribes to Pericles32, from Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus

26
Cf. Thuc. 6, 85, I.
27
See Michel CLERC,Les Met6ques Atheniens, Paris, I 893, e. g., pp. 355 ff., and HOMMEL
s. v. Metoikoi in PW XV, I932, especially 1437. The charge of foreign blood was made
mostly against *leaders of the peoplef, e. g. Hyperbolus (Eupolis fr. 92, 23ff. AUSTIN and
see note ad loc.; his father identified as a slave by schol. Wasps I007; see also Plato frgs.
I66-i67, I70 and Polyzelus fr. 5 KocK).
28 HIGNETT (above, n. 24), pp. 345f., speculates that the Periclean law of 451 was
motivated by conservative alarm at the danger to racial purity posed by marriages between
Athenians and foreign, including non-Greek immigrants; for purification of the population
as a program espoused by extreme conservatives at a later date, cf. Lysias I2, 5. Peisander,
one of the oligarchic leaders of the Four Hundred, is rebuked by Eupolis for discriminating
against a foreigner (92, iff., AUSTIN); the conservative author of Ath. Pol. found that
even under the laws restricting franchise metics were treated too much on a par with
native Athenians (i, IO; 2, 12).
29 EHRENBERG, The People of Aristophanes, London, I943; reprinted, 1974, Chapt. VI
passitn, especially p. I52.
20 E. g., Peisistratus, the tyrannicides, Cleisthenes, and Miltiades; see J. L. MYRES,
Clcisthenes in Herodotus, in: M6langes Gustav GLOTZII, Paris, 1932, p. 658; HARRISON
(above, n. 24), p. 25. 821Hdt. I, 56-58.
"8 Thuc. I, I44, 2 on Spartan EtevrocaEoca; cf. 2, 39, I (OiLXgaTtv &rc ZeCv70caEOCLq&7eEP-
 The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides' Ion 309

and Euripides' Children of Heracles, for example, the Athenians were pleased
to think of themselves as more open and hospitable than any city in Greece,
and more liberal in their treatment of foreigners who came to settle. (DtXoisvta
is a positive quality for them33. As the Peloponnesian war continued, and men
were need to maintain the population of the city and the crews of the ships,
it became advantageous for Athens to encourage immigration34, and children
of mixed marriages may have been granted citizenship rights at about the
time the Ion was produced35. There is also some evidence to suggest that the
kind of myth presented in the play was associated with the establishment of
cults that were designed to bring outsiders into the shared religious life of the
city 36. On the other hand, the doctrine of Athenian racial purity which might
oppose such trends may have been regarded by contemporary philosophy as
obsolete3, and rationalistic historiography also seems to have regarded stories
of autochthony with suspicion38.
The Euripidean version of eiye'vLo as the Ion presents it smoothes over
another issue that must have divided fifth century Athenians. The well-born
Athenian characters of the play are naturally attached to the city and its
institutions, but for the audience the bonds of inherited social status seem
to have worked against racial solidarity". Pericles' Funeral Oration is directed
yo,?iv wrvoc. . .). Demosthenes 23, 2I3 depicts Athenians as foolishly more liberal than
other states in granting citizenship.
3 Aesch. Cho. 656 is an exception. Cf. Ar. Lys. 580, Peace 296ff.; at Acharn. 508
metics are called &Zupot&v &oat7v. According to Ps.-Aristotle (De virtutibus et vitiis
125I b 35) &xo0o) e . . . rn &pEry . .. Lk6Eevov xoV L cpLX&vApconov (tlvoL); for earlier
evidence, Xen. HG 6, I, 3 and Cratinus fr. 1.2.
84Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol. I, I2; 2, 8. On wholesale grants of the right to contract legal
marriages and hence to produce citizen children (&ktLyocqt), see HARRISON (above, n. 24),
p. 29.
35For the possibility of a change or relaxation of the law of 45I, see ZIMMERN,The
Greek Commonwealth, 5th ed., Oxford, I931, P. 340 n. 2; HARRISON (above, n. 24) pp. 25f.
M. P. N1LSSON, AJP 59, I938, P. 391; cf. W. S. FERGUSON, Hesp. 7, I938, PP. 30ff.
36

See also F. JACOBY, rENEUIA, CQ 38, 1944, P. 73, and STECCHINI, ed. and trans.,
AOHNAIMN ITOAITEIA, Glencoe, Ill., 1950, P. 97 n. i, who suggests that the cult of
Apollo Patroos was instituted by Cleisthenes.
87 The concept of a common human nature opposes the notion of particular qualities
inherited by particular families or tribes: see A. W. H. ADKINS, From the Many to the
One, Ithaca, 1970, p. 8i on particularized and generalized y5OLq in fifth century thought.
The redefinition of nobility in spiritual as opposed to genetic terms seen in the Ion is found
also in Euripides twenty years earlier and suggests a well-established trend toward making
virtue available to persons of any class or nation: see Eur. fr. 336 (Dictys) and ADKINS,
Merit and Responsibility, Oxford, I960, pp. I9I f. n. I3; similarly, for the ethical meaning
of cp1$GLqsee ADKINS, Many, p. 83.
S8 According to JACOBY, Atthis, New York, 1973, pp. 83 and 303 n. 54, Thucydides
deliberately avoids the term aouk6Xv, as having a ))mythological tinge.
39 N. PUSEY, HSCP 51, I940, 215-23I, especially 2I8. For the superiority of class
loyalty over patriotism, see Brasidas in Thuc. 4, 86, 5; for the political basis of Athens'
3IO GEORGE B. WALSH

in part against the conflict of class and polis loyalties, and the argument it offers
is not dissimilar to the solution given in the Ion: both pieces suggest that
euyevSLa does not peculiarly belong to one group but, understood as virtuous
action, to the Athenian people in common.
Finally, the Ion addresses itself to the historical relationship between
Athens and the Ionians and other Greek races. Euripides' Athena rearranges
traditional genealogies so that Ion, the son of Apollo, will father the Ionian
race, and Xuthus will beget with CreusaIon's half-brothers,Dorus and Achaeus,
as eponymous ancestors for other Greek tribes. One commentator therefore
suggests that >the political object of the play seems to have been to make the
Ionians proud of their connexion with Athens, and to suggest to Dorian states
that owing to their origin there was no gross incompatibility in their forming
connexions with the Athenians<40. Since this interpretation supposes that a
particular audience will read a particularmessage in the drama, we may test it
against what we know of the audience.
There surely were lonians in the theater when the lon was produced41,
and they would have found nothing surprising in the play's insistence upon
their kinship with Athenians42. It seems likely too that they would find little
in the old appeal to ethnic ties to reconcile them to their service to Athens.
Thucydides reports widespread disillusionment with such notions43, and by
the end of the fifth century most Greeks must have realized that the argument
of common descent was, as a modern historian describes it, one of )>themore
suspect explanations of imperialism, which were never anything but inferior
excuses put forward by certain of its supporters and a means whereby they
disguised its true nature 44. Ion's descent from Apollo as it is given in the
Ion might be an attractive idea for Jonians, but it seems to have been a new

imperial policy, see Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol. I, 14; I, i6; 3, io and Thuc. 3, 82. Conservatives
in Athens may have been more attached to their ideology than to Athens: see Critias
DK 88 B 6; the oligarchs of 411 were willing as a last resort to accept Spartan rule (Thuc.
8, 91, 3); cf. ADKINS, Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece, London,
1972, P. I45 on the position of &Cyocxo(
during the war.
40 OWEN, xxxix-xl.
41 Subject-allies brought their contributions to Athens during the Dionysia, and were
encouraged to attend the theater: Russell MElGGS, The Athenian Empire, Oxford, I972,
citing Ar. Acharn. 501-503 and schol.
42 Athenians believed in this at least as early as Solon (fr. 4); cf. Hdt. I, 147, 2; 5, 97, 2.

43 4, 6i, 2; 6, 85, I; 7, 57, I. See also J. DE ROMILLY,Thucydides and Athenian Imperi-

alism, trans. Philip THODY, Oxford, I963, p. 83 n. 5.
44 DE ROMILLY (above, n. 43), p. 82. MOMIGLIANo and HUMPHRIES, The Social Structure
of the Ancient City, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Ser. III, 4, 1974,
p. 355, observe in general of Greek society that kinship ties did not act as a powerful
political bond; cf. Hesiod's advice on neighbors and kin, Op. 343 ff. For the implacability
of the allies, see EHRENBERG (above, n. 29) p. 159, citing Ar. Lys. 576ff.
 The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides'Ion 3II

story, or at least one not generally known45, and as a curiosity of poetic

fiction it could do little to renew the vigor of the Ionians' ethnic loyalty. It is
still more difficult to imagine that the Argives, the Dorian allies of Athens in
4I8 whom Euripides is supposed to address in the Ion46 would be influenced
by the playwright's fancy that they are descended from the son of Xuthus.
Xuthus is Ion's father in the better known versions of the myth47, and by
making Apollo Ion's father, Euripides has cast Xuthus in the role of deceived
husband, as a comical figure, reserving the greater glory for Ion and his sons.
Thus, if the Euripidean genealogy of Greek races bore a significant message
for his audience, it could not have been for its Ionian and Dorian members.
Euripides' treatment of the myth yields more meaning if it is understood
as directed at the Athenian spectators. Athenians had too little regard for
lonians simply to be proud of being their kin 48, and even the resident aliens
in the city might be esteemed more highly than the allies 4. Revolts within
"6Much pertinent evidence is lacking, but Euripides is our first extant source for the
story of Apollo as Ion's father; ERMATINGER, Die attische Autochthonensage bis auf
Euripides, Berlin, I897, P. I40, and WOLPF (above, n. i6) p. i9i n. 9 speculate that E
invented this detail himself. That the story was not generally known may be deduced
from Hdt.'s omission of it (cf. 8, 44, 7, 94) (see also FARNELL, The Cults of the Greek
States, Oxford, 1907, IV, p. I55 and JACOBY, above, n. 36, p. 73), and from the absence
of the cult of Apollo loctpCpoq at any Ionian city other than Athens (but for the cult of
Apollo rev&rop at Delos see FARNELL pp. io8, i6i, 374 n. 55). At Athens itself the cult
may have originally implied nothing about legendary descent from the god and may
not at first have been celebrated by the whole people: according to FERGUSON (above,
n. 36) P. 3I, Apollo was called IloctpCoq because the cult was *inheritedo (cf. FARNELL,
p. I60) and Plato's explanation of it (Euthydemus 302 D) may date from a source no
earlier than Euripides. On the other hand, early Attic legend was much revised in the
fifth century (for the process well-documented in the fourth, see L. PEARSON, The Local
Historians of Attica, APA monograph XI, 1942, reprinted Westport, Conn., 1972, P. I48),
and someone like Hellanicus or the fifth century Athenian historian Pherecydes (the
author of a work sometimes entitled *Autochthones.) may well have been responsible for
Euripides' version of the myth. VON FRITZ, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung, Berlin,
I967, P. 483, notes in Hellanicus a process of revision complementary to the one required
here, the invention of human mothers for heroes otherwise known only as the children of
divine fathers; Euripides seems to have drawn upon Hellanicus as source at least once
(VON FRITZ, P. 484, citing schol. Phoen. 662). In the Ion E. may be parodying the practice
of Hellanicus and others of explaining names etymologically, and of deriving place-names
from names of people (cf. Hellanicus, frgs. I23, I12, 24); there is some precedent too for
the choice of a local hero as the key figure in a revised version of early human history (cf.
VON FRITZ p. 8I on Acusilaus). On the possible poetic sources for E., see OWEN, xii-ixi.
Generally known or not, E.'s myth as an explanation of Apolline cult need not have any
political force: *religion played only a superficial part in determining the attitude of the
alliest, according to MEIGGS (above, n. 41) P. 305.
46 GR1:GOIRE, P. I66. '7 Hdt. 7, 94; 8, 44.
48For the low status of the lonians, see Hdt. i, I43, 2; I, 146, I; 5, 69, i; Thuc. 5, 9, I;
6, 77, I; 7, 5, 4; 8, 25, 3; HAARHOF, The Stranger at the Gate, London, 1938, P. 27.
"9 EHRENBERG (above, n. 29) p. 155.
3I2 GEORGE B. WALSH

the empire, increasingly frequent after the failure of the Sicilian expedition,
would provoke fear and hatred of subject states. If the Ion was produced in
this climate50 it is addressed to an audience on very bad terms indeed with its
allies, and more apt than ever to deal harshly with them5l; the play would
work against the temper of the Athenians and the current turmoil within the
empire. In presenting Ionians as the kin of Athens and the progeny of Apollo,
Euripides elevates their status, and suggests perhaps that they deserve better
treatment than they are getting from the Athenians 52. The reminder that
Athens and Ionia are related is couched in terms that are flattering also to
the Athenians - the god loved their queen, their king is a model of aristocratic
virtue, and their glorious city in opening its gates to Ion becomes more glorious
still. Xuthus is the play's figure for the Athenian ally. He has helped to protect
the city in the past, and once he is freed from the suspicions aroused against
him by the old man he is to be taken in and protected in turn. He does not
participate directly in Ion's pursuit of Creusa, and so he is never directly
opposed to the Athenians in the play. His marriage to Creusa will be fruitful,
his ignorance of her adventure with Apollo lovingly preserved by her people.
Apollo's part in the play's resolution restores a divine mandate to the association
between Athens and Ionia that it had not had since their league's treasury
was removed from Delos and the god's protection. As the stage Athenians'
response to Ion reflects the historical treatment of the metics, their response
to Xuthus reflects the historical problem of the allies. On both points, the
play demonstrates first the dangers of fear and hatred, and then offers a model
of harmony in which, under the aegis of the god, all differences may be com-
posed53.
It is now possible for us to speak generally about the manner in which
Euripides' Ion addresses itself to contemporary events. Many fifth century
Athenians would recognize their own attitudes in the old slave's hatred of
Ion and in Creusa's confused feeling of injustice, but they are not invited by
the poet to identify themselves with the dramatic characters, for they will

date of production, see below, p. 313 ff.

50 For the
51 Cf. Cleon'spolicy
toward Mytilene much earlier in the war, Thuc. 3, 37-40.
62For changesin Athenian policy toward Delos that would suggest this is a controversial
issue at Athens, see MEIGGS (above, n. 4I) PP. 301 f.; for Athenian sentiment favoring
better treatment of the allies, EHRENBERG (above, n. 29) p. 158, citing Eupolis fr. 225
KocK.
53 The antagonism between Athens and her Dorian enemies is also softened by E.'s
legendary genealogy, at least for Athenians who may patronize their country cousins. For
fifth century views of the unity of the human race, see HAARHOF (above, n. 48) p. I6,
citing Hippias in Plato Prot. 337cff.; ADKINS,Merit (above, n. 37) p. 193 n. I9 on Demo-
critus I07; H. C. BALDRY, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought, Cambridge, 1965,
p. 52 and Eur. frgs. 902; I047 and Soph. fr. 532; Eric HAvELOCK,The Liberal Temper in
Greek Politics, New Haven, 1957, pp. 256f. on Antiphon.
 The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides' Ion 3I3

know that the slave is perverse and Creusa misinformed. By making the slave
propound an extreme doctrine of racial purity, the poet invites his audience to
reject it; by making him contrive the plot against Ion and by delicately ex-
plaining Creusa's vulnerability to his influence, the poet allows Athenian
spectators to forgive themselves and their queen. Their patriotic satisfaction
in discovering Ion's divinity and Erechtheid blood will not encourage their
xenophobia, for they have been made to see Ion himself as its victim, and their
pride in their origins is qualified by Ion's enlarged understanding of purity and
good breeding, and by the numinous aura that mixture has acquired in the
course of the play. Finally, fear of the empire's rebellious allies is conjured
away by the play's image of Xuthus as the object of affection and humor, as a
useful friend in bed and on the battlefield.
Each point of the play's historical topicality reflects a controversial issue
among the members of Euripides' audience, rather than appealing to their
shared ideological reflexes. The resolution of the play is designed to render
these controversies moot by constructing a world in which finally there is no
occasion for controversy. Against the conflict of class loyalty and patriotism,
the Ion depicts the Athenians as sharing a common e'yevem; against the
conflict of Athens and her allies, and disputes among Athenians about the
treatment of rebellious subjects, the Ion presents the shared heritage of Ionians
and Athenians, discovered in triumph over ignorance, hostility, and fear; in
response to the problem of foreigners in Athens, the play presents Ion in the
position of a metic and then reveals that he is the most fundamentally Athenian
character imaginable, his blood diluted but with a god's.
The Athens Euripides praises in the Medea serves in that play as an ideal
point of contrast to the wickedness of the heroine. It is almost a fairyland,
described in terms antithetical to the real world in which Medea moves.
Euripides' technique in the Ion is similar, but here we have two Athens, one
the city of the pedagogue which Ion hesitates to adopt as his own (595ff.),
and which the audience knows well, the other a city which serves as an emblem
of felicity for the happily reunited mother and son, and for Ion's glorious
progeny. One is real, the other only desirable, and much of the force of the
play comes from the manner in which it first evokes contemporary reality and
then abandons it for something better.

The Date of the Ion

The meter, genre, and form of the Ion suggest54 that it was written at some
time between 4I3 and 4Ii, but critics who regard the play as patriotic prefer

54 WrLAMOWITZ, ed., Euripides Ion, Berlin, 1926, P. 24; GRAGOIRE, P. 173; WEBSTER
The Tragedies of Euripides, London, I967, P. 5; F. SOLMSEN, Euripides' Ion im Vergleich
mit anderen Tragodien, Hermes 69, 1934, reprinted in E.-R. SCHWINGE, ed., Euripides,
3I4 GEORGEB. WALSH: The Rhetoric of Birthrightand Race in Euripides'Ion

an earlier date. Let us reconsider their arguments, and attempt to reconcile

the probable date of the play with its political content.
Three assumptions underlie the preference for an early date. The critic
who reads the play's prediction of Ionia's future glory as a propagandistic
appeal to the allies is apt to date it before the Ionian revolt of 4I2, because he
assumes that the playwright must reflect his historical situation directly55.
Similarly, OWENtakes the Ion's reference to the Eleusinian procession (Io74ff.)
to mean that the play antedates the Spartan occupation of Eleusis in 413,
when the procession could no longer be held56;DELEBECQUE finds that because
Creusa and Xuthus may travel to Delphi, Euripides' audience must also have
been able to do so, and dates the play within the Peace, when they could57.
But ZUNTZ58denies the validity of such an approach to dating: the Ion's
image of Athenian imperial glory would be as pointed at a time when the
empire was threatened as when it was secure. If Aristophanes could represent
Eleusinian celebrants in the Frogs at a time when enemy forces held Eleusis,
there is no reason to assume that Euripides could not include as part of his
poetic fiction the ancient kinship of Athenians and Ionians after the Ionians
had begun to desert the Athenian cause, or the beauty of Delphi when Delphi
was inaccessible to Athenians, or the rites of Eleusis when Athenians could
not celebrate them.
Two other assumptions underlying arguments in favor of an early date
complement one another. OWEN maintains that the destruction of Melos
embittered Euripides toward Athenian imperial policy, so that he could not
have written a patriotic play after 4I6; assuming that the Ion patriotically
favors the empire, OWENmust date it before the destruction of Melos 9.
On this point OWENapparently adopts Thucydides' view of Melos as a critical
episode in Athens' moral decay, but we cannot be sure that Euripides did also60.
Even if he was more inclined to write patriotically during the first half of the
Peloponnesian war, the Ion does not seem in any simple sense to be a patriotic
play, and so could have been written during the second.
The political significance of the play as I have describedit may reflect the
issues of the year 4II 61. If the allies were in revolt when the Ion was produced,
the force of ethnic ties would be in serious question and so invite dramatic
Darmstadt, i968, P. 451; E. B. CEADEL,Resolved Feet in the Trimeters of Euripides,
CQ 35, I941, pp. 66ff., especially pp. 70 and 78f. CEADELprefers a date no later than 4I3
because of political interpretationof the play.
S5OWEN, XL-XLI; GRPGOIRE,i66. SEOWEN, XI-XLI; Cf. WILAMOWITZ
P. 24.
" Above, n. io; arguments for dating, pp. 226ff.
58The Political Plays of Euripides,Manchester, 1955, p. 64. ZUNTZ also argues against
tbe supposed reference to events of 419 at Rhium (Ion 1592) discovered by GRMGO1RE and
OWEN(see OWEN,1. c.). 5' P. XLI.
'0 In 421, Scione had been treated just as Melos was later (Thuc.
5, 32).
'1The arguments of ENTHOVEN
(De lone fabula Euripidea, Bonn, i88o) favoring a
 CHARLES SEGAL: "The Myth was Saved" 3I5

treatment62. The problem of foreigners in the city must have been constantly
debated through the fifth century, but the Ionian revolt would make Athens
more dependent than it had been upon metic military service, and there is
some reason to believe that in response to this need the requirements for
citizenship were relaxed in 4II 63. The question of personal worth and inherited
social status addressed in the Ion would be forcefully raisedby the constitutional
changes introduced by the oligarchs. Finally, the play's fascination with the
Athenian past and the conflict between traditions of racial purity and of
openness nicely suit the political debates of 4II concerning the =rcTptog
-nOXLTeZ of Cleisthenes64; Cleisthenes was associated with the reorganization
of the tribal system which figures prominently in Athena's prophecy, and
with the introduction of new citizens into the state66.

Chicago GEORGEB. WALSH

slightly earlier date, which WILAMOWITZ(P. 24) and CEADEL (P. 79) mention, are uncertain:
cf. ZUNTZ (above, n. 58).
62 Cf. Thuc. 8, 48, 6 for particular fears of the allies of the Athenian oligarchy.
63 See above, n. 35.

6" Arist. Ath. Pol. 29, 3; HIGNETT (above, n. 24), p. 273; STECCHINI (above, n. 36), p. 43.
65 Arist. Ath. Pol. 21, I-2, 4.

"THE MYTH WAS SAVED": REFLECTIONS ON HOMER

AND THE MYTHOLOGY OF PLATO'S REPUBLIC

FOR JOHN H. FINLEY JR.

&V'O&rOL&To!; acxocftwCaLv
&x&ca'ou 6pyocv6v
?L 4Ux); ixXoCoCxp('TrL
xoct &voc(nupdvroL . ..

Homer is the father of the culture we think of as Hellenic not only because
his works achieve a codification and plastic visualization of myth, but also
because his poetry and the tradition which it culminates embody a peculiarly
Greek form of organizing through language the multiplicity of experience which
forever threatens human consciousness with the chaos of its own impressions.
In his published works and his brilliant and memorable lectures John FINLEY
has repeatedly illuminated the way in which the Greek poetic vision catches
Hermes,106.Band, Heft 2 (1978) o FranzSteinerVerlagGmbH,D-6200Wiesbaden