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.