It is no surprise that Oidipous rejects Iokaste’s appeal to ignore the Theban shepherd. If it once mattered to him enough to leave his home in secret to go to Delphi to ask whether Polybos and Merope were in fact his parents, it matters even more now. The questions that he means to put to the shepherd will in fact echo those that he once put to the Delphic Oracle pertaining to his parentage and thus his identity–questions that point both to his personal consultation at Delphi and also to the famous inscription above the entrance to its consultation chamber. The audience is now in a position to understand that it would have been better for him, had he comleted his questioning when he was there. [Mipd] That he insists upon completing the questioning now when it is too late to improve his situation should prompt the audience to consider why he was not as persistent when he had not yet committed any of the actions of which he is now guilty and why he is now willing to depend upon a witness who has already lied in an effort to cover up the truth, whereas then he had access to the god’s word. If it was because he thought that the god had dismissed him without due respect, he may have misjudged the god. He did not give any consideration to the possibility that Apollo had summoned him to inform him of a necessity that impinged on both of them. In regard to his own purpose in visiting the sacred precinct, his subsequent decision to flee Corinth showed that he was quite certain that Polybos and Merope were his parents. Therefore, his question was disingenuous. In several ways, then, his approach to the consultation affronted both the god and the institution operating under his authority. The preference for a fallible mortal witness over a divine source of truth clearly illustrates the low regard in which he holds the institution of oracular prophecy at Delphi. It seems likely that, had he not dismissed the god “without honor” but stayed to obtain a precise understanding of the god’s instructions for him, he would now find himself in altogether different circumstances. [Md] [Mw]