wered
that she knew it, but that he too was fierce above measure, and that he
must not defile with blood the house whereto he went in the city of
Athens. And when he was loath to listen to her, she said, "Seest thou
this that I hold in my hand?" Now what she held was a basket with tufts
of wool about it. "This is that in which I found thee, long ago, a
new-born babe. And Apollo hath laid it upon me not to say aught of this
before, but now to give it into thy hands. Take it, therefore, for the
swaddling clothes wherein thou wast wrapped are within, and find out for
thyself of what race thou art. And now, farewell; for I love thee as a
mother loveth her child."

Then Ion said to himself, "This is a sorrowful thing to see, this basket
in which my mother laid me long since, putting me away from her in
secret, so that I have grown up as one without a name in this temple.
The god hath dealt kindly with me, yet hath my fortune and the fortune
of my mother been but ill. And what if I find that I am the son of some
bondwoman. It was better to know nought than to know this. But I may not
fight against the will of the god; wherefore I will open it and hear my
past whatever it be."

So he opened the basket, and marvelled that it was not wasted with time,
and that there was no decay upon that which was within. But when the
Queen saw the basket, she knew it, and leapt from where she sat upon the
altar, and told him all that was in her heart, that in time past, before
she was wedded to King Xuthus, she had borne a son to Apollo, and had
laid the babe in this basket, and with him swaddling clothes of things
which she had woven with her own hands, and "Thou," she said, "art my
son, whom I see after this long time."

And when the young man doubted whether this was so, the Queen told him
the pattern of the clothes; that there was one which she had woven being
yet a girl, not finished with skill, but like rather to the task of one
that learns, and that there was wrought upon it the head of the Gorgon,
and that it was fringed about with snakes, like to Pallas's shield, the
aegis. Also she said that there were necklaces wrought like to the scales
of a snake, and a wreath of olive besides, as befitted the child of a
daughter of Athens.

Then Ion knew that the Queen was his mother; yet was he sore perplexed,
for the god had given him as a son to King Xuthus, nor did he doubt but
that the god ever speaketh that which is true. Then he said t