Sunday, September 27, 2015

Orphans and Stepchildren, and the Cult of Heredity



      Even though you probably learned about Athens as the birthplace of democracy back in junior high social studies, in truth democracy came on the scene fairly late in Greek history, and there are plenty of myths about the kings of Athens. These kings-and-queens stories, recorded in the democratic era, tend to show contemporary tensions (for example, regarding the place of aristocracy in a democratic society, or about the meaning of being Athenian rather than foreign, or about parent-child relationships and how whippersnappers should revere their elders) played out allegorically by mythic characters. One great example is the story of Xuthus and Creusa.
      In Euripides’ tragedy Ion (this is an orphan-centered story about an atom that has tragically lost one of its electrons. Wait, what?), Creusa is an Athenian princess, whom Xuthus married to become king of Athens. Unfortunately, they’ve been unable to have any children together. They need children to carry on their royal line, so they go to an oracle to ask how they can have children. There’s never any question that the king might choose a successor on the basis of merit; rather than find the best successor available, he’s determined to choose one who is as genetically similar to himself as possible. There’s a certain level of irony to this, since Xuthus himself is hardly a carbon copy of the previous king; he’s not even Athenian, and his legitimacy as king depends on the fact that he married a princess with no brothers.
      Although oracles are notorious for being cryptic and misleading, here the oracle gives a refreshingly simple answer to the query. The oracle orders Xuthus to walk out of the temple and greet the first person he meets as his son. Note that the oracle doesn’t say that this person is his son, just that Xuthus should accept him as his son. Which is a pretty safe answer for the oracle to give, probably; if a king comes in to an oracle demanding a son, and the oracle advises him to adopt the first random dude he meets on the street--well, it’s not like most people would turn down the chance to be king, right? Xuthus cheerfully follows the instructions, and the random dude, after some initial confusion, consents to be adopted by this distinguished stranger.
      There is something laughable about Xuthus being so delusionally desperate to have a genetically-related son that he will accept any improbable story that yields him one. The random dude, whose name is Ion, is an orphan and so not in a position to correct Xuthus when he rolls in claiming to be his dad. But Ion, unlike Xuthus, harbors a healthy degree of curiosity and skepticism about this claim that they’re related. He asks Xuthus probing questions like, ‘So who was my mother?’ and ‘What do you mean, you don’t know who my mother is?’ and ‘How did you father a child without even realizing it?’ and ‘Isn’t that incredibly irresponsible behavior for a king?’ and ‘What am I doing living here, if you live in another city?’ to which Xuthus replies with an extremely weak ‘Gee, I dunno, I guess I visited this place and got drunk and got some girl pregnant and then left town and totally forgot about all the floozies I might have slept with on the road.’ He is uninterested in tracking down the boy’s mother or confirming the story in any way. He got what he wanted: one son, full grown! And now he seems nervous about facing any suspicions that might poke holes in the oracle’s unlikely story.
      Such suspicions would be fully justified, since the oracle actually is misleading Xuthus: Ion isn’t his son in any genetic sense. Xuthus is not terribly bright and a lot of things get by him; he has no idea that his wife Creusa was raped by Apollo before they were married, and she secretly gave birth to a child. She had to abandon the child to avoid being outcast from her family, but Apollo took care of the child and in fact had it brought up in this same oracular shrine, ready to be adopted by Xuthus when he had trouble having his own children. Ion is actually his stepchild or his adopted child, but Xuthus is so fixated on his idea of having his own child that he’s willing to fabricate memories for himself to account for a son he doesn’t remember siring.
      Creusa is even worse. She discovers that Ion is really her son, and is overjoyed to recover him after so long a separation. Before she learns that, though, she believes Xuthus’ story that Ion is the product of his drunken indiscretions, and immediately becomes the wicked stepmother, going so far as to attempt to poison her supposed stepson. When she learns that he is really her son and not her husband’s, she abandons all plans to kill him and welcomes him gladly. In short, she knows next to nothing about this stranger, but she is making life-or-death decisions about him based on information about who had sex with whom before he was born. She doesn’t care what sort of person he is, whether he would be a good ruler, or whether he has a personality she wants to deal with at breakfast every morning; her decisions are based not on his own qualities or actions, but on who his ancestors are.
      The most ridiculous part, I would say, is that once Creusa learns that she is Ion’s mother, she realizes that her life will be much easier if Xuthus never learns the truth--that she was an unwed teenage mother before their marriage--and is allowed to persist in his happy delusion that Ion is his son. Unlike most Greek tragedies, this one ends not in a torrent of blood, but with everyone making up and going home, the king secure in his willful ignorance. Because Ion is Creusa’s son, descended from the royal line of Athens, we’re supposed to presume that he will be a good king ever after, that he will have an innate talent for kingship and administration and justice--but the rash actions of Creusa, and the stolidity of the contemporary king, hardly inspire confidence on that account.

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