Where the stranger must mean that Oidipous should not avoid home for his parents’ sake (τῶνδε), the immediately preceding masculine plural that should serve as the demonstrative pronoun’s referent is not Oidipous’s parents but the gods: for the gods’ sake Oidipous should not avoid home. [Gd] Taking “before the gods” as a figure of speech, one must go even further back to find the antecedent; Kamerbeek (196) suggests going back ten lines to the prophecies. The stranger’s language can therefore be taken to mean that he can correct Oidipous if he is fleeing home because of the gods or their prophecies. All readings are in fact correct: Oidipous is fleeing his parents, the prophecies, and the gods, as a result of which he has in fact already “come home”—he has taken flight into (εἰς) his father’s home and his mother’s bed. The Corinthian is in no position, then, to offer Oidipous good counsel. Instead of fleeing home, prophecy, and the god’s sacred precinct, Oidipous would have done better to ask the god for instruction (δίδασκέ με; l. 1009). [Mw] [Mip]