This exchange continues to repeat the series of questions and answers that passed between Kreon and the Pythia. [Mip] It gives the audience the impression that it is hearing the god’s very speech as it came from the mouth of the Pythia and now comes from Kreon’s mouth. [Apcma] The god elaborates upon his initial response by making an explicit connection between spilled blood and the plague now infecting Thebes. Description of a city tossed by a winter storm of blood applies to Athens directly, as if the god were addressing himself to a question put by Athens regarding its two-fold woes of plague and bloody war upon the seas. The audience may experience the god’s response almost as if Athens had sent its own representative on an embassy to Delphi. Hearing the god’s stipulation of banishment or killing to remedy the city’s present misfortunes, the Athenian audience might (however fleetingly) consider whose banishment or killing could bring an end to the plague and war in Athens. [Aj] In the context of the representation of an ongoing consultation, this question suggests that, were Athens consulting at Delphi, it could ask this next. The parallel between Thebes and Athens begins, then, to offer at least a partial answer to the audience’s earlier question, how its own misfortunes can be converted to benefits, for if misfortune results from a crime against the god, then the god may be expected to stipulate the remedy. [Gt-a] If he sets forth a means of purification and the city complies, the city might yet hope to restore itself to health and good fortune. [Mw]