His steeds on, leading Hesperus in his rear,
And night, with robes of raven darkness, urged
The unyoked coursers of her radiant car,
While the stars glittering follow in her train,
The Pleiad gliding through the vault of Heaven.
Girt with his sword, Orion too was there,
The Bear within her golden orbit turned,
And the Moon's Orb above shot arrowy light
Through half the month."
They sit at the banquet. The old man orders larger goblets to be brought. He hands to his young lord the most capacious and richest cup, dropping into it the powerful drug Creusa had prepared. As a libation was being poured, some one uttered words of evil omen. Ion commands them all to empty their goblets on the earth. At that moment, a flock of doves came trooping in, and with their beaks sipped the spilled wine. The bird which tasted that which Ion had poured out is seized with convulsive shudderings, and dies.
So is the base design frustrated. He instantly accuses the Pædagogus, who admits that he is the instrument of the Queen's malice. Ion determines to take the life of Creusa. The Pythian priestess appears to him, and bids him go to Athens, bearing with him the ark or cradle in which she had received him as a foundling. When they meet—the son unconsciously seeking the life of his mother, who, in ignorance, had attempted his—she recognises the cradle, and he listens for some time incredulous to her declaration that she is his mother. She who was to have fallen by his hand is now embraced with tenderness, and she triumphantly exclaims:
ἄπαιδες οὔκετ᾽ ἐσμὲν, οὐδ᾽ ἄτεκνοι·
δῶμ᾽ ἑστιοῦται, γᾶ δ᾽ ἔχει τυράννους·
ἀνηβᾷ δ᾽ Ἐρεχθεὺς,
ὁ τε γηγενἐτας δόμος οὐκέτι νύκτας
δέρκεται, ἀελίου δ᾽ ἀναβλέπει λαμπάσιν.
"Childless no more, no more; our hearth again
