Creusa's Palinode: Gender, Genealogy, and Intertextuality in the Ion

This essay argues that the conflicts of the Ion dramatize Euripides' agonistic relationship with the Oresteia as a monumental predecessor. Creusa's lyric criticism of Apollo, which answers Apollo's arguments at Orestes' trial in the Eumenides, provides a perspective from which to challenge the Oresteia's exploitation of a gendered hierarchy for its tragic mythmaking. This challenge, in turn, opens a space for a self-consciously innovative Euripidean mythopoetic project. The Odyssey mediates between these two tragic texts, providing a paradigmatic model of filiation and family resemblance, issues at the heart of both the Ion and the Oresteia.