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IV.] tamed flock about the temple fell dead upon tasting the cup prepared by the old retainer for Ion, and how, upon the old man's interrogation and confusion, Creusa's death by stoning has been forthwith determined. Creusa rushes on in flight, and with the advice of the chorus takes refuge as a suppliant at the altar. Ion comes in pursuit, and an angry altercation ensues. But while he hesitates to slay her at the altar, and complains that a criminal should thus evade justice, the aged Pythia appears, carrying with her the swaddling clothes and tokens which she had long ago found with the infant Ion, and hidden away, and which she is now moved to restore to him on his departure for Athens—to her the loss of a dear and long-adopted child. Ion receives these tokens of his unknown mother with great emotion, and then follows a famous recognition scene, where Creusa proves that the embroidery is her work, and that she is the mother of the lad whom she had just attempted to slay, and who now seeks in turn to slay her. Ion is only half convinced, and is about to enter the temple to demand from Phœbus an explanation of his answer to Xuthus, when Athene appears aloft and removes all remaining doubts. The play ends by Ion, Creusa, and the chorus retracting their charges against Apollo, and confessing that the righteous fare well in the end, and the wicked can never continue to prosper.

30. Nothing can be more ingenious than the construction of this play, which is not a tragedy, but a melodrama. The action is sustained and the interest excited throughout, and there is, moreover, great tact in the handling of the two personages who take no very respectable part in the play. Apollo is throughout attacked and challenged, yet he never appears, and commissions Athene to explain his providence at the close. Xuthus, who is in some sort the dupe of the oracle, is in the first place painted as an obtrusive good-natured nonentity, and then is removed from sight when his position becomes awkward. The heroine is interesting—not from her character, but from her