If the child is not of a slave, then he would be τις ἐγγενὴς—one of those belonging to the royal family. This is the same word used by Teiresias at l. 452, but it seems to be used differently in the two contexts, for when Teiresias predicts that a man considered to be a resident alien will later prove to be ἐγγενὴς, he seems to mean “native-born,” but when Oidipous uses the word he is not thinking of Laios’ killer, whom he seems to have all but forgotten, but the baby, presumably himself, whom he must now consider may have been “legitimate.” Despite this application of the word to himself, Oidipous follows the herdsman in his use of the indefinite pronoun τις, which lends the impression that he is groping among a number of possible candidates, when in fact there is but one. The question of “the one and the many” thus seems again to be raised. Earlier in the play it revolved around the number of assassins; now it revolves around the number of children borth to Laios and Iokaste. “Many” proves in both contexts to have been a deliberate fabrication whose author in both cases turns out to be “one” and the same person: the herdsman. This prompts the audience to suppose that the herdsman can be identified by a single trait: his propensity for deception through calling one many. Thus, where Oidipous puts more faith in the word of this herdsman than that of seer or Oracle, the audience can see that he, and perhaps the philosophers who debate about the nature of the universe in these terms, cannot be relied upon. Teiresias’s prophecy, by contrast, proves to be accurate regardless of which way ἐγγενὴς is interpreted, for Oidipous was both native born and the ruling family’s only legitimate heir. [Mpew] [Apcma]