This question is ambiguous; the herdsman probably means to respond directly to the threat of physical force, but ἀντὶ τοῦ, “In return for what injury?” can equally well mean “For whose sake?” Now continually on the alert for signs of the god’s active presence, the audience will quickly supply the answer, “For the god’s sake,” for if the god’s project is to be brought to its conclusion, the herdsman must confront Oidipous with the fact that he is the son of Iokaste and Laios. It is in order to make this demonstration of the god’s ability to realize prophecy that a plague is upon the city, that the Sphinx once perched just outside one of the town’s seven gates, and that Oidipous killed Laios and married Iokaste. All these calamities can be traced to the resistance offered the god both by the members of the ruling family and the populace (witness the suppliants’ compromising behavior at the play’s opening). So it is clear that the god requires the herdsman’s testimony. The herdsman’s question is directed to Oidipous and pertains to the herdsman’s presumptive crime; he challenges Oidipous to give a good reason why he should be punished. Yet of course he knows who Oidipous is; he has endeavored not to have this fact come to light, which means that in his mind he has been aiding his ruler (even though he failed more than once to help King Laios). Yet the fact that the god requires the facts to come to light means that in helping Oidipous, the herdsman resists the god and the necessity that even the god must work hard to accommodate. The rhetorical question he poses, then, raises a real question: to what extent is the herdsman responsible for his resistance to the god? Everything that he has done, from saving the infant to failing to save Laios’ life to keeping mum about Oidipous being Laios’ killer, has furthered the god’s project, although at least on the last point not knowing anything about it. This suggests that, if he must suffer in order to be persuaded to speak now, this is not because of anything he has done to deserve it, but simply because necessity demands his cooperation, even if this means his being made to suffer to obtain it. This relationship between justice and necessity can be applied to others, such as Oidipous: his being made to kill his father and marry his mother was not predicated on a premise of just punishment, but rather compliance with necessity. The god’s dictum, once issued, is tantamount to necessity. Oidipous was required by the words the god delivered to Laios and Iokaste to kill Laios. Oidipous was required by the words the god delivered to him at Delphi to both kill his father, marry his mother, and with her to give birth to an unholy third generation. Had Oidipous sought clarification of the instructions he received at Delphi, it is possible that things might have worked out differently for him; he might have been informed that the killing of his father was not murder but sacrifice, and he was not, as he feared, to marry his mother, but rather be reunited with her. Once he broke off the interview with the Pythia, however, his understanding of the god’s dictum became necessity, with the consequence that the sacrifice had to become a murder, the reunion a marriage, and the possibility of an unholy generation a reality. This suggests that Athens’ interpretation of the god’s dictum that Sparta would win the war and have the god’s help in doing so is made necessary in part by Athens’ understanding that this is what the god meant to say. An inquiry, then, consisting of an Athenian embassy to Delphi, might bring about a new understanding of the god’s dictum, and thus change the necessity to which it pertains. [Mpei] [Mi] [Dnp]