Ion of Chios

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For other uses of this term, see Ion (disambiguation).

Ion of Chios was a 5th Century BCE (c. 490/480 - c. 420 BC) versatile writer, dramatist, lyric poet and philosopher in Ancient Greece. He was a contemporary of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. Of his forty or fifty plays only a few titles and fragments have survived, while of his elegies and dithyrambs nothing has been preserved. He also wrote a work which has been counted as 'philosophical', its title, Triagmos (or Triagmoi), and the few surviving fragments (no. 36 Diels-Kranz) suggesting it had Pythagorean leanings. He was also a composer and accordining to Kleonides was of the first musicians that used eleven-stringed lyra. He was a friend of Socrates and contemporary with all the three great dramatists, winning the third prize in the contest where Euripides was first with his play Hyppolytus. In commemoration of this not very glorious victory he presented each Athenian citizen with a flask of Chian wine.

The standard reference work on the subject is (in German) Ion von Chios, by Albrecht von Blumenthal.