To the Chorus’s expression of concern for Iokaste Oidipous responds with a dismissive statement to let be what must be. The verb ῥηγνύτω, however, is active in form and suggests that something like a violent storm is about to break upon Iokaste. Knowing that the very same ills are about to befall him, the audience will hear in this word an invitation to the same force (which the audience knows to be Apollo) to smash him. “Whatever she wants” suggests that he thinks that she is asking for whatever destruction is in store for her. The audience, however, knows that she made this consequence necessary when she and Laios defied Apollo by conceiving a child. If the same destruction is about to strike him, he likewise asked for it (χρήζει) with his defiance of Apollo’s prophecy. Indeed, the one blow for which he is not prepared and that is already depriving him of his ability to think clearly is the thunderous crash that must occur as he realizes that the prophecy he determined to negate has nevertheless, despite all his intentions and efforts, long since been realized. Thus, as he stalwartly clings to the helm while towering waves crash down on his ship, he makes himself an object of the audience’s pity for the ignorance in which he dares the most terrible of forces to do its worst. His foolhardiness enables the audience to distinguish between the nobility of bearing up under every manner of natural necessity and the self-destruction of challenging a god and daring him to do his worst. [Mpei] [Apa] [Mw]