Having already steeled himself to this witness’s resistance, Oidipous deftly presses on with his interrogation without allowing himself to be annoyed by the herdsman’s attempt to duck his question by posing his own. Oidipous’s answer, “This one here,” in response to the herdsman’s question, “What sort of man do you even mean?” seems ambiguously to juxtapose himself and the Corinthian, for both are now present and the Theban has had dealings with both of them. The Theban herdsman’s bewilderment suggests that he interpreted Oidipous’s previous questions similarly: So you know who I am, having first known me there? If this is what the herdsman understood, he would naturally have been taken aback, and he would again be taken aback by Oidipous’s rephrasing, which he could take to mean: Have you never dealt with me? ξυνήλλαξας (“having had dealings”) is the same verb employed moments ago (l. 1110) when Oidipous claimed never before to have had anything to do with this herdsman. That statement was of course false: while he was not aware of having had dealings with Laios’ herdsman, the audience and apparently the herdsman himself are well aware that dealings were had involving both herdsmen and the infant. Indeed, all their dealings with one another, past and present, have also clearly involved the god—a point that is underscored by ξυνήλλαξας, for it again echoes what was said of Oidipous by the priest when the play began—that he was the “first of men in dealings with the gods.” That might now be reformulated: with respect to the receipt of divine attentions, Oidipous has for years been the foremost mortal. Thus, where Oidipous is at pains to proceed methodically so as to hem in his witness, his inadvertent ambiguities confound his effort. His speech seems most unclear when he works to be most precise. In contrast to earlier instances of double entendre, where the unintended (but usually more accurate) meaning was caught only by the audience, here the herdsman himself immediately hears and reacts to the truth, which suggests that he has known it all along. The audience will thus be apprised of an additional complexity in the relationship between intended meanings, understood meanings, and the truth with which these meanings stand in some relation; where one who is at odds with the god may be compelled to make true statements contrary to the meanings he or she intends, one who serves the god may make true statements on the god’s behalf and yet still be misunderstood by an unreceptive listener, and one who understands and accepts his subordination to the god can recognize the truth when it is articulated and will comply with it even when it is distasteful to do so. [Gd] [Mpea] [Md] [P]