Apollo as if of a third person. Xuthus, meanwhile, consults the Oracle, and comes out and proclaims Ion as his son. He has been told so by the god; and the age of the youth so exactly agrees with a former gallantry of his, that he is convinced of it, and succeeds in persuading Ion. They rejoicingly embrace. Ion's feelings, at this crisis, are exquisitely described; and in some lines of genuine pathos and beauty, he compares his present happy and humble lot—
Θεῶν ἐν εὐχαῖς ἤ λογοισιν ἦ βροτῶν
ὑπηρετῶν χαίρουσιν, οὐ γοωμένοις.
"In prayers to Gods, or conversing with men,
Ministering to those who joy, not those who weep,"
with the dangers and pains of an elevated rank among those who are strangers to him, and to whom he is unknown. The son of a foreigner—the child of love, not of marriage—he dreads the aristocratic prejudices of the autocthonous Athenians. The chorus now tells Creusa that Xuthus had found a child of his own blood. She is filled with grief and jealousy. The Pædagogus, evidently introduced into the play to do this particular work, suggests to her that she should destroy Ion, and undertakes the murderous deed himself. How it fared with the prisoners and their intended victim, the narration of a messenger informs us. A banquet is given in the sacred precincts of the Temple. All around is grand and gorgeous. There are strewed about tapestries, on which are embroidered imitations of the spoils which Hercules[1] bore off in triumph from the vanquished Amazons. Pictured, too, on them are these scenes:
"Uranus,
In Heaven's wide concave, marshalling the stars,
- ↑ An anachronism, as it happens, for Ion was more ancient than the son of Jove and Alcmena.
