Perhaps Oidipous only means to ask, “Where is one to find an old and poorly marked track,” but his supposition that the murderers’ track is poorly marked and old only underscores his ignorance, for the audience will realize that he is quite literally standing in the track that he himself is continuing to make afresh. Rather than being old in origin, as he probably means it, the audience might rather interpret, “of ancient cause, guilt, or responsibility.” In this case, double entendre strongly suggests to the audience that it ascribe blame to Oidipous or, perhaps, even beyond him to a more ancient time. What brought him to this moment? The god, indeed, and yet the god’s speech insists upon ascribing the guilt to the one making the track, which one must therefore trace back to its origins. Oidipous’s inability to see that his own feet block the view of the perpetrator’s tracks would be comic if it was not so terrible and if it were not clear that the god’s purpose in perpetrating a joke of such apparently monstrous cruelty can only be to admonish whoever gets the bitter humor (and this can only be the audience) to employ every means at its disposal to avoid falling victim to an error as grievous as that committed by Oidipous: the impiety, namely, of thinking oneself to be above the need for divine guidance. [Ad] [Mpea] [P]