When the herdsman expresses his sorrow that he saved the infant by wishing he had died “that day,” his actual word means rather “this day,” which will prompt the audience to recall that the god would not have allowed the herdsman to die on the day he saved the infant any more than he could allow him to die on the day that Laios’ traveling party was killed and any more than he can be allowed to die now, for his testimony is essential to the god’s project. It is the needs of the god, then, and not one’s own or those of another mortal that ultimately determine whether one lives or dies. [Apamu] [Mw]