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.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)