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.
Read more about this topic: Ion Of Chios
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Great works constructed there in nature’s spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)