Where the Chorus correctly anticipates that “something awful” is about to burst forth from Iokaste’s departure, “this silence” might be taken to refer to Oidipous’s failure to say or do anything to intervene. Athens having been confronted by the almost inescapable evidence of Apollo’s intervention on Sparta’s behalf by visiting a plague upon the city may have been similarly immobilized. [Gt-a] [Md] Like Oidipous, Athens has ceased even to speak about or attend to the matter. Its silence similarly signals the rapid approach of “something awful.” If the city were not immobilized by its terrified self-absorption it would speak and act—it would acknowledge the plague to be a divine intervention and it would hasten to send an embassy to Delphi to inquire of the god, what it must say or do to find a remedy. [Mp] [Mi]