Ion
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- Is it by his command thou keepest these relics, or why?
- Loxias put in my heart that day—
- What purpose? Oh! speak, finish thy story.
- To preserve what I had found until the present time.
- What weal or woe doth this import to me?
- Herein were laid the swaddling-clothes in which thou wert enwrapped.
- These relics thou art producing may help me to find my mother.
- Yes, for now the deity so wills it, though not before.
- Hail! thou day of visions blest to me!
- Take then the relics and seek thy mother diligently.
- [*](This line is assigned to Ion in the Greek.)And when thou hast traversed Asia and the bounds of Europe,
- thou wilt learn this for thyself; for the god’s sake I reared thee, my child, and now to thee do I entrust these relics, which he willed that I should take
- into my safe keeping, without being bidden; why he willed it I cannot tell thee. For no living soul wist that I had them in my possession, nor yet their hiding-place. And now farewell! as a mother might her child, so I greet thee. The starting-point of thy inquiry for thy mother must be this;
- first, was it a Delphian maid that gave birth to thee, and exposed thee in this temple; next, was it a daughter of Hellas at all? That is all that I and Phoebus, who shares in thy lot, can do for thee. [Exit Pythian Priestess.
- Ah me! the tears stream from my eyes
- when I think of the day my mother bore me, as the fruit of her secret love, only to smuggle her babe away privily, without suckling it; nameless I led a servant’s life in the courts of the god. His service truly was kindly, yet was my fortune
- heavy; for just when I ought to have lain softly in a mother’s arms, tasting somewhat of the joys of life, was I deprived of a fond mother’s fostering care. Nor less is she a prey to sorrow that bare me, seeing she hath suffered the self-same pang in losing all the joy a son might bring.
- Now will I take and bear this ark unto the god as an offering, that herein I may discover naught that I would rather not. For if haply my mother proves to be some slave-girl, ’twere worse to find her out than let her rest in silence. O! Phoebus, to thy temple do I dedicate this ark.
- Yet why? this is to war against the god’s intention, who saved these tokens of my mother for my sake. I must undo the lid and bear the worst. For that which fate ordains, I may ne’er o’erstep. O! hallowed wreaths and fastenings,
- that have kept so safe these relics dear to me; why, ah! why were ye hidden from me? Behold the covering of this rounded ark! No signs of age are here, owing to some miracle; decay hath not touched these chaplets; and yet ’tis long enough since these were stored away.