The vexed Theban hissing desperately to his Corinthian counterpart to “shut up” suggests that in his view, revealing the detail that it was Iokaste who gave him the infant will enable even Oidipous to make all the necessary connections. It is this piece of information, always in Iokaste’s possession, that drove her in despair from the stage. In this secret she and the herdsman, having both been party to the transaction, shared. This has for decades been their secret. This is the special bond between them, the one that must have moved her to grant his request for a posting as far as possible from the palace, a consideration that she withheld from Oidipous and the townsfolk (ll. 763-4). With her gone, only the herdsman can supply this crucial detail. Unlike her, however, he is not permitted to remove himself from the stage; he must stand and answer. His agitation reflects his unwillingness to do so, but it also implies that he feels he might be compelled to speak—if not by the shepherd, then by Oidipous himself. This will prompt the audience to consider that Oidipous’s becoming the instrument in his own undoing goes beyond the Homeric version of the myth, which makes the gods the authors of his unmasking. Here Apollo is clearly at work, but his project requires Oidipous’s participation. This suggests either that the god is incapable of achieving his aims without Oidipous’s participation or that it will be more just or perhaps more effective for Oidipous to work his own punishment. Considering that when the god similarly required Oidipous to complete the project of punishing Laios in keeping with the god’s prophesied admonitions, Oidipous chose rather to take flight, it seems just that Oidipous now be compelled to aid the god, not in another’s demise but his own. His unaware “cooperation” takes the form of vigorous, disciplined, and experienced questioning aimed at uncovering the details of his own identity. This is the same question for which he initially went to Delphi, but he broke off his questioning of the Pythia before getting most of the facts. Had he questioned her thoroughly and inexorably, as he is doing now, events would have taken an altogether different path. Now, however, it is too late to avert the catastrophe; his questioning has no other object than to release upon him the flood of sorrows so long husbanded for him by the god. [Mipd] [Mp] [Aj] [Mw]