Tutor
Lady, we are betrayed, for I am afflicted with you, by your husband, and by trickery
[810]
we are outraged and cast out of the house of Erechtheus. I do not say this in hatred to your husband, but I love you more than him; he married you when he came as a stranger to the city, receiving both the royal home and your full inheritance,
[815]
and now he is shown to have secretly bred children by some other woman; how secretly, I will tell you. When he saw you had no child, he could not endure to bear a fate like yours; but he bedded a slave in secret union
[820]
and begot this child, and gave him to some Delphian to bring up abroad. This man educated him, dedicated to the god, in this sacred house, so that he might conceal it. When Xuthus knew that the youth was grown, he persuaded you to come here, for the sake of your childlessness.
[825]
And the god has not deceived you; your husband deceived you long ago, rearing his son, and wove such plots; if convicted, he might ascribe it to the god . . . he was about to invest him with the rule of your land.
[830]
And he fashioned this new name at his leisure, Ion—because he met him coming out, indeed!
Chorus Leader
Alas, how I always hate wicked men, who put together plans of injustice and then adorn them with tricks. I would rather have as a friend a good man who is ordinary
[835]
than an evil man who is more clever.
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Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Ion, translated by Robert Potter. New York. Random House. 1938.
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