Stasimon 3
[Episode]
Ah me! would I were dead!
Creusa
O woe is me for my calamity! Mine is a heritage of suffering and woe that poisons life, good friends.
Old Servant
Ah, my child, ’tis death to us!
765
Creusa
Ah me! ah me! grief drives its weapon through this heart of mine.
765
Old Servant
Stay thy lamentations.
Creusa
Nay, but sorrow lodges here.
Old Servant
Till we learn—
770
Creusa
Ah, what further news is there for me?
770
Old Servant
Whether our master is in the same plight and shares thy misfortune, or thou art alone in thy misery.
Chorus
On him, old sir, Loxias hath bestowed a son,
and he is enjoying his good fortune apart from her.
775
Creusa
Herein hast thou declared a further evil crowning all, a grief for me to mourn.
Old Servant
The child of whom thou speakest—is he some woman’s destined babe, or did the god declare the fate of one already born?
Chorus
A youth already born and grown to man’s estate doth Phoebus give to him; for I was there myself.
780
Creusa
What sayest thou? nor tongue nor lip should speak the word thou tellest me.
Old Servant
And me. But declare more clearly how this oracle is finding its fulfilment, and say who is the child.
785
Chorus
Whomso thy husband first should meet as he issued from the shrine, him the god gave him for his son.
Creusa
Ah me! my fate, it seems, has doomed me to a childless
life, and all forlorn am I to dwell in ray halls, without an heir.
790
Old Servant
To whom did the oracle refer? whom did our poor lady’s husband meet? how and where did he see him?
Chorus
Dear mistress mine, dost know that youth
that was sweeping yonder shrine? He is that son.
795
Creusa
Oh! for wings to cleave the liquid air beyond the land of Hellas, away to the western stars, so keen the anguish of my soul, my friends!
Old Servant
Dost know the name his father gave to him, or is that left as yet unsettled and unsaid?
800
Chorus
He called him Ion, because he was the first to cross his path.
Old Servant
Who is his mother?
Chorus
That I cannot say. But,—to tell thee all I know, old sir,—
her lord is gone, with furtive step, into the hallowed tent, there to offer on this child’s behalf such gifts and victims as are offered for a birth, and with his new-found son to celebrate the feast.
805
Old Servant
Mistress mine, we are betrayed by thy husband, fellow-sufferers thou and I; ’tis a deep-laid plot to outrage us
