Then one who had seen the whole matter from the beginning to the end, ran with all speed and told it to the Queen; and she, when she heard it, and that the officers of the people were coming to lay hands on her, fled to the altar of Apollo, and sat upon it in the place whereon the sacrifice was laid; for they that flee to the altar are sacred, and it is a sin against the god if any man touch them.  But in a short space came Ion with a troop of armed men, breathing out threats and fury against the Queen.  And when he saw her he said, “What a viper is this that thou hast brought forth, land of Attica!  Worse is she than the drop of Gorgon’s blood wherewith she would have slain me.  Seize her that she may be thrown from the rock.  ’Tis well for me that I set not foot in her house in Athens; for then had she caught me in a net, and I had surely died.  But now the altar of Apollo shall not save her.”

And he bade the men drag her from the holy place.  But even as he spake came in the Pythia, the priestess.  And when Ion had greeted her, asking her whether she knew how this woman had sought to slay him, she answered 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.”