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I
THE Ion is concerned with generational passage more directly than any other Euripidean play. Ion's questioning of Apollo reflects what many an Athenian youth must have experienced growing up in the intellectual ferment of the Sophists, the Socratics, the philosophers, and of course tragedians like Euripides.1 Creusa is equally involved in a crisis of life passage, and this too (among other things) focuses on her view of the gods. Ion's coming of age and Creusa's rediscovery of herself as a mother, however, are not just personal issues. They also involve the definition of Athenian civic identity, the myths of Athens' origins, male and female roles in the polis, general views of the human condition, and the ways of the gods. How the play's intricate artistry interweaves these themes is the subject of this essay.
At almost every point three major life stages are present: birth, adolescence (both male and female), and marriage. The anguished moments of Ion's birth and exposure recur repeatedly, almost like a musical motif. Because these are reenvisaged largely through the bitter memories of Creusa, the two life stories are intertwined; and the male development from infancy to adulthood is inseparably linked to the critical transition in female experience from unmarried girl [parthenos] to the mature woman whom we meet early in the play. Because the plot is anchored so firmly in the first moments of a child's life, followed by immediate abandonment, recognition is not only the major driving force of the plot but also carries the most intense emotions of the play.2 To reach the next stage in their lives, both protagonists must return to those defining moments of conception and birth. Conversely, the play's representation of the stages of human life emphasizes the importance of those primary ties of life's first beginnings.
This spanning of the experience of transition at different stages of life qualifies and supplements John Winkler's brilliant and influential thesis that the experience of the ephebe (the young male on the verge of adulthood) may have been a determining element in the origins of tragedy and remained central to the plots of tragedy.3 In fact, the ephebe's transitional moment is important precisely because it so deeply involves the other stages of the life cycles, both...