Oidipous at last understands the scars on his ankles to be signs of his connection to the rescued infant; fully identifying himself with the baby, he calls it “me.” His question concerning the injuries is however again not aimed at producing new information; it can be meant only to test the authenticity of the Corinthian’s testimony. Oidipous is now continuing to proceed on the basis of his own command of the situation, which makes the witness’s reliability more important than the implications of the information he has just divulged. Oidipous’s asking about the injuries means that he knows them to be a sign of something that happened prior to his being found in the wilderness. That he does not mention or ask about how the baby got lost in the wilderness makes it clear that from the injuries he has already been able to infer that he was exposed, which should also mean that he understands that his parents did not want him to live. He should always have known that he was not the natural son of Polybos and Merope. It seems almost pathological, then, that Oidipous should feel the need to assert his dominance, not only over the witness who calls him “son,” but over the facts, the very circumstances of his childhood. He will not entertain the thought that he is not the son of Corinth’s ruling couple. The mental blocks to which he is subject insulate and protect him from the truth. He is operating either at a super-human or sub-human level. The audience must recoil from both, for he is not a god, and so this kind of self control makes him dangerous, but a sub-human limitation also makes him dangerous. These brackets around his position as a mortal may prompt the audience to appreciate the importance of a ruler who knows both his strengths and his limitations and acts in accordance with them. [Md] [Mpe] [Mg]