¹ The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. Grene-Lattimore (Euripides III), Chicago, 1958.

² Directed by Mr Clive Barker, concerned with the relevance of Euripidean drama as a professional man of the theatre. My thanks are due to Mr Barker for those fresh insights into the play which only skilful stage performance can give and also for discussions of his interpretation from this point of view; I have appreciated comments from other colleagues, including Professor J. G. Davies, Mr I. DuQuesnay and Mr E. W. Whittle, ever ready to share his scholarly appreciation of the subtleties of this play.

³ The Historical Method in Literary Criticism in The Making of Homeric Verse, ed. Adam Parry, Oxford, 1971.

⁴ Helpful recent bibliographies in Conacher, D. J.Euripidean Drama, Toronto/London, 1967CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Barlow, ShirleyThe Imagery of Euripides, London, 1971Google Scholar. My treatment here is necessarily partial and selective.

⁵ London, 1889. Verrall acknowledged his debt to this ‘curious book…for most important aid’ in his Preface (p. vii) to his own The Ion of Euripides (n. 6).

⁶ When a performance of the Ion was given in Cambridge, for which Verrall wrote a translation and commentary, The Ion of Euripides, Cambridge, 1890.

⁷ Euripides the Rationalist, Cambridge, 1913, pp. 138–76.

⁸ See the comments of A. S. Owen in the Introduction (pp. xxxii–xli) to his edition of the Ion, Oxford, 1939. Cf. the pertinent comments by Dodds in his edition of the Bacchae, 2 ed., Oxford, 1960: ‘It is interesting that no continental scholar of standing has ever (so far as I know) taken Verrall's interpretation of Euripides really seriously’ (p. xlviii n. 2); and ‘Verrall was in fact driven to maintain that Euripides’ plays were, like the poetic dramas of his own time, written with an eye to the study rather than the theatre: “to the ultimate purpose the stage-exhibition at the Dionysia was indifferent” (Introduction to the Ion, p. xlv). Yet Aristotle a century later still thought exclusively in terms of the stage-exhibition’ (p. xlix n. 1).

⁹ What Dodds has to say about the contemporary recoil of doubt after a great age of rationalism in relation to a similar recoil in antiquity (The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, 1951, p. 254 f.) is relevant to my argument: ‘Was it the horse that refused, or the rider? That is really the crucial question. Personally, I believe it was the horse—in other words, those irrational elements in human nature which govern without our knowledge so much of our behaviour and so much of what we think is our thinking. And if I am right about this, I can see in it grounds for hope…the men who created the first European rationalism were never—until the Hellenistic Age—“mere” rationalists: that is to say, they were deeply and imaginatively aware of the power, the wonder, and the peril of the Irrational. But they could describe what went on below the threshold of consciousness only in mythological or symbolic language; they had no instrument for understanding it, still less for controlling it; and in the Hellenistic Age too many of them made the fatal mistake of thinking they could ignore it. Modern man, on the other hand, is beginning to acquire such an instrument. It is still very far from perfect, nor is it always skilfully handled; in many fields, including that of history, its possibilities and its limitations have still to be tested. Yet it seems to offer the hope that if we use it wisely we shall eventually understand our horse better; that, understanding him better, we shall be able by better training to overcome his fears; and that through the overcoming of fear horse and rider will one day take that decisive jump, and take it successfully.’

¹⁰ Euripides the Irrationalist in CR 43 (1929), pp. 97 ff. The opinion is re-affirmed in The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 187.

¹¹ Ib. p. 97.

¹² Ib. p. 103.

¹³ Ib. p. 104.

¹⁴ Ib. p. 103.

¹⁵ Kitto, H. D. F., Greek Tragedy (3 ed. London, 1961), p. 317Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Ib. pp. 316 ff.

¹⁷ Ib. p. 317.

¹⁸ Conacher, D. J., Euripidean Drama (Toronto/London, 1967) p. 276Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Viz. Grube, G. M. A., The Drama of Euripides (London, 1941) p. 279Google Scholar: ‘The aim [of the play] is not to prove anything at all, but to dramatize;’ Kitto ib. p. 312:'…the first purpose of the dramatist in writing these plays [Ion and Iphigeneia in Tauris] was to create an effective stagepiece; to exploit the resources of his art for their own sake, not for the sake of something bigger;' Rivier, AndréEssai sur le Tragique d'Euripide (Lausanne, 1944) p. 124 n. 3Google Scholar: ‘…L'intérêt patriotique ne saurait motiver la composition du drame qui cherche à peindre des sentiments humains.’

²⁰ Conacher, p. 285. Cf. Wolff, Christian, ‘The Design and Myth in Euripides' Ion’ HSCP 69 (1965) p. 169Google Scholar: ‘If one thinks of it as a kind of romance, then a certain leisurely digressiveness—descriptions, talk of myths, of political life in Athens—is not inappropriate, and a number of critics, complaining of distracting irrelevancies, might be fairly answered. Yet the play is also genuinely serious, to which at least its near catastrophe can testify; it must somehow qualify as a tragedy.’

²¹ Dodds, , The Greeks and the Irrational p. 182Google Scholar, citing E. fr. 783.

²² 2. 53. 4.

²³ Kitto, p. 309.

²⁴ Burnett, Anne Pippin, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford, 1971) p. 1Google Scholar.

²⁵ Podlecki, Anthony J., ‘The Basic Seriousness of Euripides' Helen’, TAPA 101 (1970) pp. 401 ffGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Po. 1449b 24–8. Cf., however, Kitto, p. 314: ‘It appears then that the absence of a tragic theme is the direct explanation both of the regular form and brilliant execution of these plays, and of the blend that they present of the pathetic, the amusing and the melodramatic;’ and p. 318: ‘We have seen already that the Euripidean tragi-comedy reverts to the normal type of plot. Formally, the Iphigeneia obeys the same Aristotelian canons as the Tyrannus; a fact which Aristotle duly acknowledges. But though these plots obey the laws (a fact that we need not stay to demonstrate) they obey them in a new spirit, and the new spirit causes interesting changes in technique.’ Whilst agreeing that Kitto's general description of the ethos of tragi-comedy accords well with the tone of the Ion and on the whole provides an excellent direction for the frame of mind in which we should approach the play, Conacher (p. 282) is bound to add: ‘This description is, however, too consistently worked out for the material it concerns: one feels that Kitto understands the tragi-comic genre more thoroughly than Euripides does, a fact which is not surprising when one considers the matter historically. Thus while we find that much of the Ion conforms with Kitto's general description, there are moments in this play (as in others) when we find Euripides breaking Kitto's rules.’

²⁷ Ib 1449^b 31, 37, 1450^a 1, 38: with Lucas's comments.

²⁸ Owen, p. xviii.

²⁹ Po. 1453^b 11 ff.

³⁰ Barlow, Shirley, passim. Cf. also Wolff, p. 181Google Scholar: ‘The myths, then, as they are presented partly suggest detachment, a self-sufficient poetry, enhanced by images of nature—stars (84, 797, 870, 1078, 1147, 1151 ff.), sun (41, 82 f., 1134, 1148, 1439, 1467, 1516, 1550), moon (1080, 1155), night (85, 717, 955, 1049, 1150), rocks (11, 274, 492 ff., 714 f., 871, 936 f., 1267, 1479 f., 1482), caves (17, 288, 500 ff., 892, 937 f., 948, 958, 1239, 1494), water (95 ff., 105 f., 116 ff., 147 ff., 167, 174 f., 872, 1075, 1081 ff.), laurel (76, 80, 103, 112 f., 148, 422, 919), ivy (217),olive (1433ff., 1480)—and the colouring of gold (9, 25, 146, 157, 192, 431, 459, 887, 890, 909, 1007, 1030, 1085, 1154, 1165, 1175, 1182, 1429 f.). But even as these elements of nature, apart from their suggestion of a withdrawn calm, take on the associations of a story which began in the darkness of a cave and unfolds in the natural beauty of Delphi, so the myths have their symbolic relevance…they reflect the role of violence in the play…and with violence a benign end. The images of fire and snake are similar.’ On fire and snake see Wolff's refs. and comments ad loc.

³¹ Note ad 1549 citing Po. 15 and comparing IT 1435, where the shipwreck has been brought about so that Athene may utter her prophecies. But there is no evidence in the Ion scene of the use of a real μηχανή, since the vision appears above the temple and Athene could have stood on the top of the building which made the back-scene.

³² L. 1517 f. and Owen's note on the interpretation of ἆρα as ἆρ' οὐ.

³³ Between 420 and 416, Analecta Euripidea (1875) pp. 173, 178–9, cf. id. Hermes 18 (1883) p. 242 n. 1; between 415 and 412, Ion, Einleitung (1926).

³⁴ See Owen, pp. ix–xvii.

³⁵ Owen, p. xli.

³⁶ Zuntz, G., The Political Plays of Euripides (Manchester, 1955) p. 64Google Scholar.

³⁷ Cf. Conacher, p. 268: ‘The peculiar structure of the Ion is admirably suited to the full exploitation of its ironic possibilities, for it enables the same ironic situation to be played up in a variety of different ways.’ He continues (and here, I disagree): ‘Indeed, so fundamental to the theme and plot is this ironic play between the real and imagined situations that, in this drama, the irony becomes almost an end in itself and not (as in more serious drama) a means to an end, a way of heightening the tragic climax which gives final expression to its meaning.’

³⁸ As Mr Barker has pointed out to me.

³⁹ Cf. Owen, p. xix and n. 1.

⁴⁰ I owe these shrewd observations to Mr Whittle.

⁴¹ Owen, pp. 74, 185–6; Imhof, Max, Euripides' Ion. Eine literarische Studie (Berne, 1966) pp. 19–21Google Scholar; Shirley Barlow (pp. 45–8) has an illuminating analysis.

⁴² Shirley Barlow, p. 48, cf. p. 144 n. 27: ‘It is true that the birds are seen by Ion as the bearers of omens from gods to men (180), but the point is that they are other gods who do not impinge upon Ion's particular devotion to Apollo. His attitude is similar to that of Hippolytus who will take only Artemis seriously as the object of his worship.’

⁴³ Cf. Owen, p. xxvii.

⁴⁴ P. 205.

⁴⁵ But he expresses renewed indignation and determination to confront Apollo with his actions when Kreousa has left him (436 ff.). Owen says that the pious young votary of Apollo becomes the mouthpiece of Euripidean views, hardly appropriate to his character or office. May it not be rather the case that we do here have a revealing glimpse of strength of character supported by confidence in Ion's knowledge of temple ritual, of what may and may not be done—of which we have clear evidence in his answers to the women attendants when he first meets them? (219–32).

⁴⁶ Wolff, pp. 174 ff., gives proper emphasis to the importance of this speech.

⁴⁷ Froma Zeitlin, I., ‘The Argive Festival of Hera and Euripides' Electra’, TAPA 101 (1970) pp. 645 fGoogle Scholar. and n. 3. The realistic atmosphere of Delphi described in the Andromache (1085–1160) is compared.

⁴⁸ See Owen's note ad 237.

⁴⁹ For the thought as typically Euripidean see Dodds, , CR 43 (1929), p. 103Google Scholar, citing Hipp. 120, Ba. 1348.