ION Essay Thesis Example For Students

ION Essay Thesis A monologue from the play by Euripides NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Plays of Euripides in English, vol. ii. Trans. Shelley Dean Milman. London: J.M. Dent Sons, 1922. OLD MAN: My honoured mistress (for with you I grieve),We are betrayed by your perfidious lord,Wronged by premeditated fraud, and castForth from Erectheus house: I speak not thisThrough hatred to your husband, but becauseI love you more than him, who wedding youWhen to the city he a stranger came,Your palace too and whole inheritanceWith you receiving, on some other dameAppears to have begotten sons by stealth:How twas by stealth Ill prove; when he perceivedThat you were barren, he was not contentTo share the self-same fate, but on a slave,Whom he embraced in secrecy, begotAnd to some Delphic matron gave this son,That in a foreign realm he might be nurtured:He, to the temple of Apollo sent,Is here trained up in secret. But the sire,Soon as he knew the stripling had attainedThe years of manhood, hath on you prevailedHither to come, because you had no child.The god indeed hath spoken truth; not soXuthus, who from his infancy hath rearedThe boy, and forged these tales; that, if detected, His crimes might be imputed to the god:But coming hither, and by length of timeHoping to screen the fraud, he now resolvesHe will transfer the sceptre to this stripling,For whom at length he forges the new nameOf Ion, to denote that he went forthAnd met him. Ah, how do I ever hateThose wicked men who plot unrighteous deeds,And then adorn them with delusive art!Rather would I possess a virtuous friendOf mean abilities, than one more wiseAnd profligate. Of all disastrous fatesYours is the worst, who to your house admitIts future lord, whose mother is unknown,A youth selected from th ignoble crowd,The base-born issue of some female slave.For this had only been a single illHad he persuaded you, since you are childless,T adopt, and in your place lodged the sonOf some illustrious dame: but if to youThis scheme had been disgustful, from the kindredOf ?olus his sire should he have soughtAnother consort. Hence is it incumbentOn you to execute some great revengeWorthy of woman: with the lifte d sword,Or by some stratagem or deadly poison,Your husband and his offspring to dispatchEre you by them are murdered: you will loseYour life if you delay, for when two foesMeet in one house some mischief must befall,Or this or that. I therefore will with youPartake the danger, and with you conspireTo slay that stripling, entering the abodeWhere for the sumptuous banquet he is makingTh accustomed preparation. While I viewThe sun, and een in death, I will repayThe bounty of those lords who nurtured me.For there is one thing only which confersDisgrace on slavesthe name; in all besideNo virtuous slave to freeborn spirit yields.