Politics and Challenge: The Case of Euripides’ Ion

Euripides’ Ion was performed in 409 B.C. in order to strengthen the case for Alcibiades’ return from exile. There is a considerable overlap between the anecdotal tradition relating to Alcibiades, Pericles, and Aspasia and the characterization of Ion, Xuthus, and Creusa. Euripides puts across a pro-Alcibiadean message, excusing Alcibiades’ faults, both major and minor, rebutting charges that Alcibiades was of servile origin, promoting his religious policy, and providing him with a fresh genealogy to replace his supposed physical descent from Ajax. The case seems to be confirmed by details in Aristophanes’ Plutus, where the first person encountered on leaving Apollo’s temple also possesses Alcibiadean characteristics.