The impasse ends when the palace’s double doors swing open. As the god whose response the suppliants have been seeking would not be expected to come from within the palace, the audience will infer that the character about to emerge will not be Apollo. Indeed, a figure clothed as a ruler and perhaps carrying a staff of office passes out through the doorway and steps into a complex set of relations: a symbolic space set aside for a god by prostration, wreaths, altar, and incense and an emotional space defined by the needs, hopes, and expectations of the suppliants. As the ruler strides forward into this space he displays a disregard for divine prerogative and a disdain for the suppliants’ express desire to receive a response from their god. Depending upon its orientation towards religious practice and the observance of religious custom, the audience might be affronted or excited by the character’s apparent disregard for convention and propriety. Considering moreover that the spectators, like the suppliants, are also gathered about the smoking altar, the character’s impertinence touches them directly. On the other hand, assuming that the suppliants on stage show no sign of unease, the audience may take its cue from them and accept as appropriate a mortal ruler’s response to a situation that conventionally calls for an intervention by the gods. These alternatives place the audience’s own piety at issue. As the audience senses the difficulty of the position in which it is being put, it may be reassured by the fact that, simply in taking its place in the Theater of Dionysos, it affirms its piety. Its own sitting to view the play is paradoxical, for the audience expresses piety by attending a play that immediately implicates it in the affirmation of an impious attitude. [P]