SUMMARY OF THE MYTHS AND RITUALS RELEVANT TO EURIPIDES' ION

1. The contest of Athena and Poseidon to become the guardian deity of Athens.

Athena won and became Athena Polias, for her gift of the olive-tree was judged (by the gods, the king, or the people) better than the salt spring Poseidon offered.  However, some honors were granted to Poseidon too, after he flooded a part of Attica in his rage: he was later worshiped in the Erechtheum.

2. The birth of Erichthonius.

During the reign of Cecrops, Hephaistos, the child of Hera without a father, pursued Athena, who was the child of Zeus without a mother.  Athena, the virgin goddess, an "unwilling bride," fled, and from Hephaistos' semen, as it fell on the ground, Erichthonius (half-man, half-snake) was born.  The root khthon means "earth".  Cecrops too was a snake-man who had been born from the earth; he is credited with founding the city, which was then called Cecropia.  Erechtheus appears sometimes as a doublet of Erichthonius.

As in other stories of miraculous birth, the child is placed by Athena in a basket and entrusted to the three daughters of Cecrops: Aglauros, Pandrosos, and Herse, and they are told not to open it.  Aglauros and Pandrosos disobey, they open the basket and, upon finding the infant, either because of his monstruous shape or because he is guarded by two snakes, in panic they hurl themselves from the Acropolis rock and die.

3. The story of Ion, son of Apollo and Creusa (kreousa = princess).

It is not attested before Euripides, who did not expect the audience to recognize the name of Creusa, since it is repeated six times in the prologue.
 

4. The myth of the four tribes.

In Homer the Athenians are the only Ionians. In a fragment by Hesiod, Hellen (a male mythic ancestor of the Hellenic race; do not confuse with Helen) is the father of Dorus, Aeolus and Xuthus, and Xuthus is the father of Ion.  Pausanias  says that Achaea was inhabited by the Ionians; Ion  gave his name to the Ionians.  In Euripides' play Ion is the father of the four eponyms of the Ionic tribes (74), and through them founder of the land of Asia (1581 ff.)

5. The Arrephoria.

Three girls aged seven to twelve, who lived in a house on the Acropolis for a year, at the time of the festival (according to Pausanias 1.27.3) "during the night carried on their heads what Athena's priestess gave them to carry; and neither she Ö nor they Ö knew what it was Ö Not far away Ö was a natural entrance heading undergrounds; this is where the virgin girls descended.  They deposited there what they were carrying and brought it back covered up."

6. Cult of Apollo Patroos (="Paternal" Apollo)

Solon introduced this cult (beginning of the sixth century B.C.)  Apparently he was worshiped only in Athens, he was a new creation, and "Solon supported his cult by the authority of Delphi, into whose sphere he introduced Athens."

7.  Delphic oracle

The temple of Apollo at Delphi was the site of the god's famous oracle.  He was called the "prophet of his father Zeus," but his revelations were indirect and ambiguous.  Delphi inculcated the sense that murder demands atonement and at the same time that it is possible to overcome catastrophe through expiation.

8. Festivals on Mount Parnassus.

In the winter months the oracle at Delphi belonged to Dionysos.  During this time every second year, the Thyiades, a highly respected college of women, celebrated their festival on Mount Parnassus.  Women were sent by the Athenian state periodically to assist in these celebrations.

Numbers are those of the lines in the play's translation in the Chicago U. Press translation, as well as those of the original Greek and of the Loeb translation in Perseus.
 

6:  Phoebus was another name for Apollo, perhaps because his mother was Phoebe, a Titan.

9:  Pallas is Pallas Athena.  Several explanations are given for this name.

95: Castalia: the small stream that cuts the deep gorge below the double peaks ("Shining Rocks") of Parnassos, at Delphi, is fed by fresh springs.  This place was a place of purification.  Priests, prophetess, and consultants were required to make ritual lustrations before they entered the temple.  See l. 145.

 184 ff.:  The first part of this entry-chorus ("parodos") is a song of marveling strangers in a holy place.

190-4:  Herakles killed the Hydra, a many-headed beast.

202:  With Pegasus, a winged horse given to the hero Bellerophon, he was able to kill the monstruous Chimera (= lion, goat, and snake).

206:  The Giants were earth-born monsters who challenged the Olympian gods.  Athena picked up the island of Sicily and threw it at the giant Enceladus.

216:  Dionysus was not always included among the gods who fought the giants.  In paintings sometimes Dionysus and his followers appear brandishing their ritual ivy-tipped rods or wands.

223:  Delphi was said to be "the navel of the earth;" its location was defined by two eagles of Zeus who met there in flight, having departed from the two opposite ends of the world.

300:  Trophonius was an oracular spirit who had a cave shrine on the NE slope of Parnassos, just off the road that lead from Athens to Delphi.

455:  Zeus had learned that his first wife, Metis (= "Intelligence") was destined to bear children of surpassing wisdom, and particularly a son who would be king of both gods and men.  So he swallowed her, and the child she carried, Athena, was born from the head of Zeus.  Hephaistos is usually said to have split his head with his axe, to facilitate the birth; here Prometheus is credited with the role of midwife.

492:  Pan was a minor god of nature and a frequent companion of Dionysos, or of Aphrodite and the Graces.  The cave of Pan (a few yards away from the shrine of Apollo on the north slope of the Acropolis) is the scene of Ion's begetting and abandonment.

495:  Not the original Aglaurids, but three girls who impersonated them in the ritual that centered around the sanctuary of Aglaurus.  They were called Arrephoroi.  See summary of myths and rituals.

661:  Euripides puns on the name "Ion", which could be thought (despite grammar) to be the participle of "come" or "go".  Thus Ion = one coming out of the temple, going from Delphi, coming to Athens.

671:  A single Athenian parent sufficed to be a citizen until Pericles in 451 B.C. limited the citizenship to those who were born of two citizens.

720:  Compare Sophocles' Oedipus the King  438.

798:  The west was treated as the direction of death because of the setting sun.  Creusa is wishing for death.

840:  A childless Athenian had, in Solon's time, the right of keeping a concubine for the purpose of breeding free children.  Xuthus, however, was a foreigner and husband of an heiress.

872:  One of Athena's primitive names was Tritogeneia; some said it referred to her birth in the region of lake Triton or Tritonis.

887:  The scene of a girl gathering flowers is erotic, and it is associated especially with scenes of divine rape (cf. Persephone).

906:  The paean was a song in honor of Apollo, a prayer for healing or a song of victory and thanksgiving.

919:  Delos is the birthplace of Apollo; traditionally the island rejoiced in his birth and when it first looked upon him it burst into a bloom of golden flowers.

989:  The Gorgons were three terrible sisters who turned to stone anyone who looked at them.  That the Gorgon was killed by Athena is a lesser known version of the story; the Gorgon involved seems to be different  than its more famous counterpart, the Gorgon Medusa, whom Perseus killed with Athena's help. According to Apollodorus (Library 2.4.3), Perseus gave Medusa's head to Athena, who placed it in the middle of her breastplate, the aegis.

1048:  The daughter of Demeter is Persephone, who became queen of the underworld after marrying Hades.  Here Persephone is identified with Hecate (who, in turn, is often seen as the moon).

1059:  A crisp expression of Athenian xenophobia (from xenos: guest, foreigner; and phobia: fear, rejection).

1075:  The chorus uses the Eleusinian celebrations in honor of Demeter and Persephone building on the tradition that it was Erechtheus who introduced the worship of Demeter at Athens.  Iacchus is the god greeted by the Eleusinian ritual cry; he may be a doublet of Dionysos.

1122 ff.:  A tent was usual for a large outdoor gathering.

1144:  One of Heracles' labors consisted in bringing back the belt of the Amazon queen, Hippolyta.  He had to do battle with the whole tribe in order to take it.  The tent is decorated with mythical motifs.  The roof tapestry refers to Apollo's victory over the Amazons.

1196 ff.:  The dove's story belongs to a folk-tale type.

1261:  This river god enters the Erechtheid family as a grandfather of Creusa.

1392:  The miracle of the preservation of Ion's relics is Apollo's own recognition token.

1553: Athena is deus ex machina ("god from the machine," a crane used in the theatre to bring down a divine character who could solve all the pending problems at the end of a play).  Euripides was fond of such a finale.

1590:  Older traditions make Dorus (the ancestor of the Dorians) the brother of Xuthus.