Seemed to lament: amazement seized the guests,
Seeing the poor bird's pangs: her breast heaved thick,
And, stretching out her scarlet legs, she died."
Creusa now hurries in: she has been doomed to death by the Pythian Council, and her executioner is to be Ion himself; she clasps the altar of Apollo, but that sanctuary will not avail her, for has she not attempted the life of one of the god's ministers? In reply to her appeals for life, Ion says:—
"The good,
Oppressed by wrongs, should at those hallowed seats
Find refuge: ill becomes it that th' unjust
And just alike should seek protection there."
But now the old prophetess, who had years "before preserved the infant Ion, having learnt that he is soon to leave the Delphian shrine, produces the swaddling-clothes, the ornaments, and the basket, in which his mother had clad and laid him in the cave under the Acropolis. They may help him, she thinks, some day, to discover the secret of his birth. While her son is examining these tokens, Creusa sees them too, and claims them as the work of her own hands. As Ion unfolds, one by one, the tiny robes, she names, without first seeing them, the subjects which were embroidered on each of them. The recognition is complete. Creusa embraces her long-lost son, and now hesitates not to acknowledge that Apollo is his father. If any doubt remained even on the part of Xuthus, who indeed is not an eyewitness of the discovery, it is dispersed by the speech of Minerva. She ex-
