Introduction

In the previous chapter I considered how Herodotus told Delphic oracle stories in the Histories, in particular his use of narrative and storytelling featuring predictions from Delphi in light of his efforts to set himself up as a researcher, narrator and writer in a new genre. A number of key themes pertaining to oracle stories have emerged from this chapter: the need to ask the right question; the significance of the ‘enigmatic mode’ of oracles for the expression of the ontological difference between human and divine spheres; the potential for human misinterpretation; and the scope and limits of human efforts to ‘make sense’ of the prediction.

This chapter considers how an author writing around the same time as Herodotus makes use of oracle stories in a different genre and for an altogether different purpose. I explore how the Athenian dramatist Euripides tells an extended oracle story in his tragedy Ion – a drama set at Delphi and revolving around the consultation of the oracle by one of its central characters. The drama tells the story of Ion, the son of Creusa and Apollo, who was abandoned as a baby and raised by the Pythia at Delphi. His existence as a temple servant at Delphi ignorant of his real identity is jeopardised when his birth mother, Creusa, the queen of Athens, and her Thessalian husband, Xuthus, visit the oracle to enquire about having offspring.

Classical scholars have variously investigated the way in which prophecies act as literary devices in this and other extant samples of Greek tragedy, foreshadowing events and introducing references to the supernatural. Ion in particular has been recognised as a drama which features Delphic themes and relies on prophecies to move the plot along. One dimension that has so far not received the attention it deserves is the way in which Euripides’ drama does not just enact key themes of oracular divination but specifically follows and occasionally inverts the patterns of Delphic oracle stories. Euripides’ depiction of the gods in Ion, I argue, emerges against the larger backdrop of the patterns of Delphic oracle stories as described in this book.