The unfolding testimony has advanced to Kithairon, where it places the two shepherds together with the infant. Asked now to recognize the other witness as his Corinthian counterpart, Laios’ herdsman balks, stammering out instead two questions of his own that evade an answer and put the interrogator on the defensive. Oidipous is for the second time facing a witness who is clearly reluctant to reveal what he knows. To the audience the cause for the herdsman’s hesitation is quite clear; he knows that Oidipous is the infant he saved, a fact he must therefore have known these many years since his narrow escape from death. This may surprise the audience, for not having seen Oidipous since his infancy, it is not clear how the herdsman could have come by such knowledge. Indeed, in his ability to recognize the same man (Oidipous) at extremely different stages of his life (infancy, cusp of manhood, and maturity) the herdsman is like Oidipous himself when he divined the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx, a feat for which he was given Thebes to rule and Iokaste to wed. How, then, does a simple herdsman come by a similarly impressive perspicacity? His reluctance to speak now about Oidipous’s infancy recalls Teiresias, whose reluctance and perspicacity both bespeak the gift of divine insight. The herdsman, though not himself a seer seems to have acted with a seer’s insight. It may, however, be supposed that he came into the seer’s insight by way of ordinary mortal communication. His urgent request to be posted away from the palace can now be reevaluated in light of the newly revealed information that he was born and raised a slave in the royal palace. It must have been this that led to his being entrusted by the royal couple with the performance of the distasteful task of exposing the newborn in the wilderness, a task that also required his absolute discretion. He of all people (aside from Teiresias) would have to have known that the reason his master and mistress had to rid themselves of their newborn infant was that they were intent upon averting Laios’ death. And so he must have been told about the prophecy. Thus, he must have supposed that, unless belief in prophecy were nothing more than superstition, his personal decision to disobey Laios’ orders and save the baby’s life should doom Laios. Contrary to Oidipous and Iokaste, who by killing the infant sought to prove prophecy nothing more than superstition, by acting to save the infant, the herdsman gave prophecy a chance to prove its validity. Giving the infant to a Corinthian minimized the risk without altogether cancelling it; the rest would be up to the god. So where Laios and Iokaste believed sufficiently in prophecy to act against it (and thus contradict reveal their own beliefs to be in contradiction), the slave acts in such a way as to give the infant a chance at life and the god a chance to exercise and display his power. The shepherd may, like his masters, be skeptical of Apollo’s capacity for speech and action in the mortal domain, but where there actions affront the god, his support the god. They believe in chance, and yet they want to give it no play in Laios’ safety, while the slave also believes in chance, but is willing to leave it as a path, no matter how tenuous, for Apollo to treadUnlike Oidipous, who seems never to have thought of applying the prophecy he feared to himself when killing a man or marrying a woman, the slave seems never to have forgotten the danger to which his own action exposed Laios. It is therefore perhaps not altogether coincidental that he served in Laios’ bodyguard, for Laios’ safety would have been a particular concern of his, and when Laios was killed, his own first horrified thought must have been that this killer must very well be none other than the infant whose life he once spared. When he returned to Thebes to report Laios’ death, he must have more than suspected the hand he himself had played in making possible Laios’ death. It would not then have been altogether inaccurate or deceitful for him to state that “many hands” effected Laios’ killing (l. 123), for his own hands, those of the Corinthian, and even those of Iokaste and Laios, all of whom were serving as Apollo’s hands, clearly played a significant part in Laios’ death. How this had come about might well have mystified, perplexed, and terrified the slave. Now to be called to the palace, not only to witness the horrible discovery of which he had so long lived in dread, but to be asked to participate in the revelation by telling Oidipous to his face is too much for him and reduces him to blather. For clearly he does remember the Corinthian, clearly he knows with whom he is speaking, clearly he knows what facts must now come to light, and clearly he wishes he were far, far away from the members of this benighted family. His greatest trembling, however, should be reserved for the god, as whose instrument or “slave” (as Teiresias calls himself at l. 410) he has these many years served. Seeing his hesitation and understanding its implications, the audience can feel the terror of his position and appreciate the awful majesty of the god’s implacable power. No matter how dreaded the consequences of divine action, they cannot be evaded; the better path is humbly to submit. [Apa] [Apc] [Mw] [P]