Spencer
COLE The Manipulation of Tradition in
Euripides' Ion
Euripides' Ion is much concerned
with origins and identities.
Kreousa offers multiple reconstructions of her past in the
play while versions of Ion's own past accumulate as he
tries to establish his "true" identity.
These characters' various attempts to form a coherent
narrative of their past mirror the active role of the
poet in shaping, and even inventing, Attic tradition in
the fifth century. Since
references to Attic legends and heroes were relatively
scarce in Homer and Hesiod, Athenian dramatists had a
seminal role in formulating Athenian mythology. Stories central to the Ion,
those of the early autochthons, were far from fixed, as
Plato's Critias reveals when Cecrops, Erechtheus,
and Erichthonius are given as evidence of ancients whose
names have been preserved without "any memorial of their
deeds"(110a). Euripides, therefore, was working
within a scattered tradition that offered ample room for
innovation. In this paper, I argue that the
multiple personal histories, etymologies, and aetiologies
offered by the characters dramatize the malleabilty of
myth and draw attention to the manipulation of tradition
underway in the Ion.
Euripides received, and elsewhere
adopted, a tradition that named Xouthos as Ion's father. Both Hesiod (fr. 10a) and Herodotus
(7.94, 8.44) record this as does Euripides in his Wise
Melanippe (665a-c). Even
if Euripides did not invent the idea of Apollo as Ion's
father in the Ion, the fact that later versions of
the story revert to the standard Xouthos lineage shows
that he was making a departure.
Euripidesí masterstroke was to incorporate the
conventional Xouthos lineage into his plot. Euripides' new tradition (Apollo as
father) even offers an aetiology for the usual version of
the myth (Xouthos as father).
The two fathers/potential traditions are present in the drama,
but the poet wryly suggests the Xouthos version is a
saving fiction foisted on both Xouthos in the play and
those who accept this prevailing account of Ion's past.
Euripides inscribes this process of recasting tradition into
the characters' narratives in the Ion and thus
offers a self-reflexive commentary on the fluidity of
Attic legend.
In Kreousa's initial exchange with
Ion (265-74), she validates and expands upon the stories
about her family that Ion has already encountered.
Kreousa's version of the early Attic myths points to gaps,
inconsistencies, and the blurring of identities in these
tales. The stories
surrounding Erichthonius/Erechtheus were still inchoate
when Euripides first staged the Ion (ca.413?).
Earlier sources mention "Erechtheus", but "Erichthonius" does
not appear until 440/430, when differentiation also
begins to appear in sources that have Erichthonius as the
father or grandfather of Erechtheus. Ion's queries about these figures
enact the confusion still present in the tradition when
Euripides was writing his play. The ambiguity of line 267 suggests
the possibility of dual lineages since the Greek can mean
that Erichthonius is either the father or grandfather of
Erechtheus. The
interchangeabilty of these names and narratives can be seen in
the differing accounts of Athena as caretaker.
Homer (Il. 2.547-8) and Herodotus (8.55) have
Erechtheus as Athena's charge while here (267-70) and on
vase paintings Athena nurses Erichthonius.
Kreousa again shows the elasticity of her family history when
she suggests that Erechtheus sacrificed all of his
daughters, which conflicts with other accounts, even
Euripides' Erechtheus. The characters, as the
poet, are self-consciously singling out the strands of
tradition while in the midst of weaving them together
into what will become a new source for these myths, the
Ion.
Kreousa also innovates as she plots
with the Old Man (987-95).
She introduces Athena as the slayer of Gorgon, a variant that
is possibly first brought into the tradition by these
very lines. The Old
Man's question about this version hints at its novelty (994), as does Kreousa's oblique
answer (995). His
use of the word muthos, like Ion's use of the
related verb at 265 enlarges the meaning of the word in
this play to allude not only to casual speech but also
oral legend. So
this word may generate meaning at multiple levels when
used, for example, by Xouthos as he claims to be
Ionís father (529).
A meta-poetic gesture is perhaps even more obvious when the
Priestess starts to reveal the secrets of Ion's
Apollonian lineage. Ion exclaims that a "new
muthosî is being brought into the narrative of his
past (1340). A
new muthos is simultaneously unveiled by the
Priestess in the play and introduced into Attic mythology
by the poet.