The Corinthian does not justify his question but continues to lay out the truth as if he were informing the Theban of something he does not yet know, when in fact the audience sees that the Theban knows and understands these facts all too well. His statement, however, is reminiscent of the Sphinx’s riddle with its emphasis on identity despite the drastic physical differences between infancy and old age. In addition to knowing the infant’s name, the Corinthian can connect it with the condition to which it refers and, beyond that, to the child’s growth to manhood, and while he has not seen Oidipous since his departure from Corinth, he somehow managed to follow his movements to Thebes. His ability to identify the bearded man with the infant stands in contrast to Oidipous, who was able to interpret the Sphinx’s riddle but is even now unable to assemble all the details of his own life into a single meaningful sequence of events. The Oidipous who was able to infer that “man” is the one who goes on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening is unable to infer that “Oidipous” is the baby whose death Iokaste and Laios entrusted to their herdsman. Just as the baby was lamed by the injuries done him, the adult seems hampered in his thinking, not through injuries done him by his parents as they sought to evade prophecy, but due rather to his own belief that he might evade prophecy. The predilection for skepticism might be inherited from them, but he did not learn to be skeptical from them. The very possibility of success in evading prophecy requires one thing: Polybos and Merope must be his parents. In this fact he put all his faith. Having done so, he is free to kill any man save Polybos and free to marry any woman save Merope. By the same reasoning, the fate of babies born to other couples can have no bearing on him. Thus, despite the conjunction of name, physical marks, prophecies, and eye-witness testimony, all of which point towards his being the child of Laios and Iokaste, he cannot complete the chain linking the Theban infant with himself. [Mpea] [Md] Just so, Athens’ commitment to fighting the Peloponnesians despite the prophecy promising Apollo’s aid to the enemy has led to Athens’ inability to make the easy identification of its plague as an instance of that aid. Having invested its full faith in the premise that Delphi does not and indeed cannot speak for Apollo, Athens misses connections that are as significant to its wellbeing as they should be obvious to its understanding. [Gt-a] [Mw]