“Obey me!” she urges, “I beg.” Ordering and pleading are suggestive of entirely different relationships and circumstances; that she employs both at once suggests that her sense of both has come untethered. She no longer has any confidence in who she is in relation to Oidipous or their circumstances. The strong woman of steadfast convictions and a philosopher’s mind is gone. The errors that stem from those convictions have shown the confidence to which they gave rise to have been baseless. [Md] This has not changed, for were Oidipous to comply with her urging, it would not prevent the revelations that are now in train. [Apa] Thus, as she begs her son and husband to yield to her, she implicitly counsels him to resist the will of the gods. To ask him to obey her implicitly puts obedience to her ahead of obedience to the gods. To hope that he might heed her words, then, is to wish that he persist in his erroneous thinking and his impiety. [Mpea] [P] Such a hope is itself impious; she has learned nothing from the god’s demonstration of superiority. [Ap]