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Euripides has drawn from the tradition of the artistic, literary, religious and cultic image of Apollo in order to create his complex literary god. Yet he avoids the visual representation of the god who sustains his myth, and presents him only indirectly, juxtaposing the conflicting divine and mortal perspectives. But why would Euripides choose to bring out both aspects of the god (benevolent-malevolent; healer-destroyer; master of concealment and revelation) and both interpretations of his actions (divine providence- divine negligence)? The answer is manifold.

Let us first address the question of the dramatic consequences of this absence of the ambiguous god, starting in reverse by considering what the positive advantages of bringing the god onto the stage might have been. Segal has used the term 'd id a ska lo s' to describe Athena's role in Sophocles' Ayax.23 Easterling has conveniently summarised the function of

22 In the Ion, Hermes claims that Apollo was in charge of tyche (67-8; cf. 1368). When Kreousa ascribes to Tyche her decision to expose her baby and Ion his impulse to murder his mother (1496f.; 1512f.), they seem to be identifying the power of Tyche with the power of passionate human emotions, such as fear (1496) and revenge; yet, these emotions cannot

be identified with tyche as (good or bad) fortune. And if Euripides had wished to resolve the incongruity of Kreousa's and Ion's statement explicitly, he might have assigned that task to

one of his rationalist characters: see, for instance, Hecuba's refutation of Helen's claim that it

was Aphrodite who was responsible for her crimes {Tro. 983-997) and the projection of her crime instead onto her human lust, her longing for beautiful Paris, i.e. her personal

responsibility (see also Ion 896). 23 Segal, 1989-90: 398.

the divine epiphanies in Greek tragedy as having the 'capacity to stimulate awareness of the play as play and at the same time to explore the complexities of the links between human and divine'; and, in reference to the Ion, she has noted that 'the mysterious ambiguity of Apollo is best conveyed by his absence from the action and use of, as it were, hypodidaskalol

Yet how far is the directorial function of the h yp o d id a ska lo i a successful substitute for Apollo and how far does Apollo himself retain his directorial rights in this play, despite his absence? It seems to me that in fact Apollo's emissaries have no directorial function whatsoever; it is always Apollo who works through them. On the other hand, Apollo himself is kept at such a long distance that his directorial function is limited mainly to events toD ôpdpaToç'. In particular, Hermes is not portrayed as a dignified god: the information he supplies does not bear much weight and turns out not even to be entirely correct; his function is almost reduced to that of a simple narrator of the prehistory of the drama. But neither does Athena's appearance seem to be able to make a serious claim to a primary directorial function: she only comes at the point when all the serious conflicts have already been resolved (i.e. the prevention of the matricide - infanticide) and she seems to function essentially so as to maintain Apollo's distance from the play.

As for the handling of Apollo, it seems to me that Euripides has composed such an anthropocentric play that it is as if he has presented us with a situation in which the unexpected variation of the human emotions of the dramatic characters has a directorial function over the god's plan (at least during the course of the play). In so doing, Euripides calls attention to the play as artifice; for, whereas in the fabula, the structure of the myth.

Apollo is directing the action of Ion's return to his home in Athens, in the sjuzet, his play, Euripides, the playwright god, uses his dramaturgic prerogative to diminish the authorial right of Apollo, the myth-sustaining god; and, through his innovative recycling of the traditional mythic material, he composes a new version of the story, as viewed from the vantage point of the people who are involved in it. In other words, he creates a fiction, 'whose praxis tends towards the negation of its mythos'^s, but, in the end, through the dramatic device of the deus ex machina, his fiction is put back onto track. As Zeitlin puts it, with respect to the Orestes, he 'permits the enactment of that fiction and then denies it'26; meanwhile, he supplies us with a token of his supreme authorial competence in mythopoesis.

Euripides, in his new version of the tale, preserves the traditional mythological setting and offers us a sample of what seems to be the interpenetration of mythology and fifth century psychology. I would suggest that it is only in passing that the dramatist presents his characters criticising the gods and that in fact he is focusing more upon the mortals' responsibility. The play's focus is not on religious criticism, though Apollo's seduction of Kreousa is an act ambiguous in its implications about the god's relation to morality. It is rather a study of the woman who is a victim of supernatural lust and of the male values that restrain her. The emphasis is upon the woman's role in the procreation process, laying open the shortcomings and limitations of the autochthony myth; and, as a result of Apollo's absence, there is more emphasis placed upon Kreousa's maternity than upon Apollo's paternity in this version of the Athenian foundation myth.27

25 This phrase is borrowed from Zeitlin (1980: 55 n. 11) who, though, refers to Soph. Ptiil. 26 Zeitlin. 1980: 52.

Finally, what lies behind Euripides' choice to offer different interpretations of the god's behaviour as seen from different perspectives? The dramatist invites the audience to look from a distance at the overall image of Apollo, pointing out to them how in the end all the conflicting views of him expressed in the course of the play by the various dramatic figures are to be taken as complementary to one another. To approximate to a better understanding of the god's nature would entail a consideration of the amalgamation of all the views expressed into one single image of the god, which, of course would retain its ambiguity beyond any logically consistent human interpretation. By restoring the ambiguity of Apollo, Euripides gives a more authentic picture of the god in his contradictory tensions, integrating the three components of his history into one single Pan-Hellenic god.

Such a complex literary figure may perhaps tell us something about his creator, providing us with a glimpse at Euripides' own interpretation of the world. His vision of reality seems to be profoundly dualistic, i.e. a dialectic between what seems and what is, as in the He/en^s, or, one might even say, pluralistic: there are many conflicting perspectives and interpretations, and some are demonstrably wrong, but none is certain to be right. What we have is not a dualistic contrast between a single truth and a single falsehood, but a pluralistic exposition of many different points of view; this may constitute perhaps a Euripidean reaction to Athenian democracy. And though the playwright wraps up the story with the dramatic device of Athena ex machina, the problems between Apollo and Kreousa are not necessarily dealt with in a definitive and satisfactory way by this, at least superficially, happy ending; the dualism of Apollo has been cut too deeply in the course of the play to be bridged by Athena's complacent reassurance

about his constant providence during the whole plot. Neither could the double system of causation and morality, divine and mortal be comfortably bridged; the logic of the play is not just there to lead to the happy ending, but it has a thought-provoking function of its own.^s

It takes a great poet to provide such an unsatisfying and uncomfortable ending. Yet the fact that it is Athena who is brought into this unsatisfactory situation may cut two ways: if the audience give more importance to Athena than to the uncomfortable final situation itself, most spectators will probably tend to believe the story she relates; but if, alternatively, the audience concentrate more upon the uncomfortable situation, they may well end up putting the god's own morality and the Athenian civic ideology into question.

Like his god, the patron of poets, Euripides 'où Xéyei, où5è KpÙTTTet, dXXà aripaii/ei'. The spectators will draw their own conclusions.

Chapter Four

The marriage of tragedy and comedy

Already in antiquity the interweaving of tragic and comic elements in the Euripidean plays posed a general interpretative problem. For instance, in the fourth century BCE Aristotle in his Poetics finds Euripides 'TpayiKojTaTo? twv TTOLT]Tdjy', because by ending his plays 'with affliction' he makes the most tragic impression.1 Yet Euripides is also credited with being a predecessor of New Comedy. Satyros, a peripatetic biographer of the third century BCE, in his Life of Euripides emphasises the indebtedness of New Comedy to the dramatic and stylistic devices of the poet.2

1 Poet. 13, 1453a 29.

2 Frg. 39 vii, 8-22, 3rd c. BCE: '[...] or in the reversals of fortune, violations of virgins, substitutions

of children, recognitions by means of rings and necklaces. For these are the things which

comprise the New Comedy, and were brought to perfection by Euripides, Homer being the

starting point in this and in the colloquial arrangement of verses (?)'. On lines 23-27 and the reference to Homer, see Arrighetti, 1964: 122-4; Wilamowitz objects to Homer being brought in

here and suspects a corruption; but Hunt has no doubt that 'O^nîpou stands in the papyrus. Menander's indebtedness more specifically to Euripides' Ion may be better exemplified by a fragment of what has been identified as his play Leucadia\ see Pap. Ox. vol. LX, 42-46, no 4024 and plate III; I would like to thank Dr C. Austin for drawing this new papyrus to my attention and for

providing me with an early copy of it. In this new fragment, P.J. Parsons assumes a dialogue

between the priestess ZdKopoç and child (a girl), perhaps representing the first meeting between

the heroine and the priestess; he then remarks that if frg. 258, a soliloquy in anapaests, is followed

by this scene in the papyrus, 'the structure shows a clear likeness with Euripides' Ion, both dramaturgically (the scenic solo, the sacred place, the fetching of water) and in plot (parent and

child, one a new arrival, one serving the temple - Leukadia reversing the age-roles)'. Professor E.W. Handley in his Hellenic Society Presidential address (4/7/95) has argued that 'the new iambic

piece comes first as the beginning of the play, and the anapaests follow it; the sequence iambic-

anapaests, if so, follows the sequence in the Ion, which Menander surely had in mind: the rocky background is very expressly present in the remains of Leucadia, as it is in the Ion' (I quote with

The Ion has often been felt a problematic play to classify in terms of genre. Scholars have tried to reject or qualify the label 'tragedy', and several have wanted to incorporate the term 'comedy' somewhere in their alternative

la b e l . 3 In this chapter I will re-examine the nature and function of the 'comic'

elements in the Ion, and suggest that what has traditionally been seen as an issue of genre and classification should rather be understood in terms of the internal dynamics of the play.

thanks from his personal letter of 6/12/94). cf. Katsouris, 1974: 175-205; 1975, 137f.; he sees Ion 517f. in the background of Men. Hiereia/, so first Kôrte,1940: 113-115.

3 See Owen (p. xvii): The Ion has been generally classified as a romantic play; some have called it a tragi-comedy. [...] It can be grouped with the I.T. and Helen: all three plays are with exciting incident, and all have a happy ending. [...] All three also, like the Electre, [...] contain recognition scenes, and herein Euripides sets the pattern for Menander'; Lucas (p. 1): 'In so far as it ends happily after threat of disaster the Ion is a tragi-comedy; in so far as its purpose is to provide a series of thrills, to mystify the audience and hold them in suspence, it is a melodrama. [...] the Ion is a hybrid. The form, language, and convention are still appropriate to the old stately tragedy of

heroic life, but the spirit is tending towards something which did not yet exist, a contemporary

social comedy. Even the ancients [...] saw that the Ion was half way to the new Comedy of Menander'. The Ion is amongst Burnett's seven Euripidean plays of mixed reversal, the others being Ala.; /.T.; He/.; Andr.: Her.; Or. See Burnett, 1971 (p. 1): 'Some of the seven [...] have been called the "happy-ending plays", or again, the "tyche plays", and all are usually classed as

melodrama [...] they are certainly all non-Aristotelian [...] for these are dramas whose multiple plots

revolve in both directions at once, mixing actions of catastrophe with others of favourable fortune

[...] the chief characteristic of these dramas is a meeting of conflicting moods'; see also 1970 (p.

7): 'the Ion is a play that breaks the first Aristotelian rule, for its action is not single but double; worse still, its two plot streams have opposite tendencies, one following an improvement in

fortune, the other a decline'. See Knox, 1979: 'I.T., Helen, Ion [...] are clearly a radical departure from Euripidean tragedy [...] they have been called romantic tragedy, romantic melodrama,

tragicomedy, romances, romantic comedy, drames romanesques, Intrigenstücke [...] what

everyone would like to call these plays is comedy [...] provided the word 'comedy' is understood in

modern, not ancient terms [...] Euripides [...] is the inventor, for the stage, of what we know as

comedy', (p. 250); 'Ion [...] is full-fledged comedy - a work of genius in which the theatre of Menander [...] stands before us in firm outline' (p. 257).