When Oidipous responds by saying, “I enjoin you in the name of all that is holy to tell me—was it mother or father?” he seems to be interested in discovering which parent has responsibility for the decision to kill him, yet for the audience such a distinction is of no consequence, because both parents are implicated, and the question evades the far more compelling discovery that he must be the son of both Iokaste and Laios. Even when he is willing to accept the idea that he is not the son of Polybos and Merope, he is not yet interpreting these relationships in light of prophecy. Not so the audience, which now detects signs of the god’s agency in nearly every speech and in a great many deeds. It is in fact highly ironic that Oidipous emphasiszes his earnestness by invoking the Corinthian’s respect for “all that is holy,” for prophecy is meant to be holy, and yet that is the one premise that Oidipous cannot entertain. His own speech underscores this shortcoming by serving, like prophecy, as a vehicle for the communication of divine insights. The clumsy repetition of a single preposition in relation to all three nouns in Oidipous’s present question, for example, suggests a meaning that he does not intend: “At the hands of the gods, of mother, or of father?” This prompts the audience to evaluate the relative agency of all three, finding that both mother and father are directly responsible for exposing the infant, while a god or gods appear to have been working through the shepherd to effect its rescue, provide for its growth to maturity, and so to enable it to fulfill the prophecy that Laios die at its hands. The preposition expressing agency in the prophecy given Laios is in fact the same preposition as the one Oidipous chooses here. The full answer to his question, then, must include himself. The infant served as a medium in a contest in which Laios and Iokaste had pitted themselves against Apollo. The god has clearly won that contest, but in the process the rescued infant, rather than serving as the god’s willing agent, has, like his mother and father before him, contested the god’s role. Oddly–and amazingly–Apollo is in this second contest again making use of the Corinthian and Oidipous as his agents, and he is again gaining the victory. [Apamu] At the same time, the god seems to be doing everything possible to proclaim his victory in language comprehensible at least to the Athenian audience. [Apcmu] It seems to be his intent to hinder further iterations of the contest, such as Athens’ decision to evade the Oracle’s prophecy of a Spartan victory. In order to end the series of contests, all of which the god can and must win to the detriment of any and all mortal challengers, the city must begin to interpret apparent happenstance as divine action in support of divine speech. Mortal action should predicate itself on that assumption. Athens should reverse its decision before it is too late; before it loses the war with Sparta. [Mpea] [Mi] [P] [Gt-a] [Mg]