Ion of Chios - Works

Works

The number of his tragedies is variously stated at 12, 30, and 40. We have the titles and a few fragments of 11, namely, Agamemnon; Alkmene; Argeioi; Mega Drama; Phrouroi; Phoinix or Kaineus; Phoinix Deuteros; Teukros; Omphale; Eurytidai; Laertes. The Omphale was a satyric drama. Pseudo-Longinus describes the style of Ion's tragedies as marked by petty refinements and want of boldness, and he adds an expression that no one in his senses would compare the value of the Oedipus with that of all the tragedies of Ion taken together. Nevertheless, he was greatly admired, chiefly, it would seem, for a sort of elegant wit. There are some beautiful passages in the extant fragments of his tragedies. Commentaries were written upon him by Arcesilaus, Baton of Sinope, Didymus, Epigenes, and even by Aristarchus. Besides his tragedies, we are told by the scholiast on Aristophanes, that Ion also wrote lyric poems, comedies, epigrams, paeans, hymns, scholia, and elegies. Some remnants of his elegies are in the Greek Anthology.

His prose works, mentioned by the scholiast on Aristophanes, are one called Presbeutikon, which some thought spurious; Ktisis; Kosmologikos; Hypomnemata; and some others, which are not specified. The nature of the first of these works is not known. The full title of the Ktisis was Xiou Ktisis: it was an historical work, in the Ionic dialect, and apparently in imitation of Herodotus: it was probably the same as the Syngraphe, which is quoted by Pausanias. The Kosmologikos is probably the same as the philosophical work, entitled Triagmos (or Triagmoi), which seems to have been a treatise on the constitution of things according to the theory of triads; the few surviving fragments suggesting it had Pythagorean leanings. The Hypomnemata are by some writers identified with the Epidemiai or Ekdemetikos, which contained either an account of his own travels, or of the visits of famous people to Chios.