In referring Oidipous to Iokaste to confirm its belief that shepherd and sole survivor are one and the same person, the Chorus uses litotes, a trope that means nearly the opposite of what it says. For example, “not a little” means “a great deal.” So, if her expression literally means “it would not be the worst thing,” one should understand: “it would be the best thing.” Or if the literal meaning is, “she would not have the least to say on the matter,” one should rather understand: “she has the most to say on the matter.” Litotes suggests, then, that she has more to say on the matter than Oidipous currently wishes to know. What can this be? To begin with, she should know that it is a highly improbable coincidence for one person to have played key roles in two incidents. When the sole survivor reported Laios’ violent death, she must have remembered the grim task she had given him decades ago. She must have thought of the prophecy and realized that, if it had not been fulfilled, it was because of this man’s obedience to her command. But was there not the slightest chance that the baby survived? Even if it did, the chances that he would be involved in Laios’ death, even though it proved, as prophecy predicted, to have been violent, were negligible. Did she even fleetingly consider that the shepherd did not carry out the gruesome task? Even then, it was nearly impossible that the infant would have chanced to kill Laios. The extremely high degree of improbability made it nearly impossible for the prophecy to have been fulfilled. Perhaps this explains her earlier praise for a life ruled by chance (l. 977). Iokaste’s reliance upon chance only heightens, however, the audience’s awareness that the highly improbable has repeatedly happened. As unlikely as it was, the same man saved the infant and witnessed Laios’ killing at that child’s hands. As improbable as it was that the infant grow to manhood and then kill the father he had never known, this too did happen. The staggering improbability that all of these improbable events should occur is far, far more improbable than their individual occurrence. Indeed so improbable is the concatenation of necessary but highly improbable circumstances as to strong suggest divine influence or intervention, a possibility to which Iokaste, Laios, and Oidipous seem never to give serious consideration. But if she altogether ruled out divine influence, why was she willing to let her infant be put to death? Why, if she was afraid that the prophecy might prove true, did she not, when she received the report of her husband’s death, wonder about the killer’s identity? And why, since the man who brought the report was the one she also had tasked with killing her son, did she not question him about the exposure? To believe in chance does not mean, as she has taken it to mean, that life should be lived at random; it means to calculate relative probabilities, which must include the possibility that a god might utilize even the most improbable circumstance to make good on a prophecy issued in his name. Her claim to be ruled by chance is therefore disingenuous; her affirmation of chance has been just as inconsistent as her response to prophecy. [Mpea] The facts of which the audience is apprised make a mockery of her positions on both prophecy and probability. The divine voice now projecting itself through the mouths of the Chorus similarly mocks her by pointing out that, while she knows the relevant facts better than anyone, she cannot put them together to achieve meaningful understanding of her situation. [Gd] [Apcmu] And since her positions on chance and prophecy have already been identified with Athens, her shortcomings make a mockery of the audience’s own position on these matters. [Gt-a] The audience can see now that one can do nothing to increase or decrease the chance that prophecy will be realized, because the god does not work better when the probability is high and less well when the probability is low; any chance at all is enough to give scope to Apollo’s action. In relation to the probabily of a prophecy’s realization, mortal powers have no effect. That which would be highly improbable in a universe governed only by chance becomes highly likely in a universe on which chance affords gods an opportunity to exercise their influence. The only self-consistent attitudes for mortals, then, lie at two extremes: either regard prophecy as the communication of a necessity that permits no alternative and no way out, or altogether deny the gods’ influence upon the mortal domain. In saying, then, that it would “not be the worst (or least significant) thing” for Iokaste to confirm the identity of two seemingly unrelated individuals, the Chorus seems to be speaking for the god, for sooner or later, just as Oidipous will be compelled to recognize the identity of wife and mother, Iokaste will be compelled to recognize the identity of infant son and second husband. For its part, the audience must recognize and accept, if not the identity, then at least the complementarity of god and chance. [Apa] [Dc]