Oidipous is obviously enquiring about the possibility of a witness, but his speech is not straightforward. Why does he speak of a messenger—why would a messenger have been with Laios at the time of the killing? Or might he mean an independent traveler who would have carried a report of the attack? But in either case, why would he have to be sought out? And why is the witness imagined to have been “looking down” (κατεS ook on--a out the possibility ofinferences and yet another conclusion.s,gument, nd situation did not call for consultation. YS ook on--a out the possibility ofinferences and yet another conclusion.s,gument, nd situation did not call for consultation. Yῖδ’) on the killing? And what is implied by his ues of the aorist participle and the aorist indicative, which suggest completed action: “having learned everything possible” (ἐκμαθὼν) from the witness “he [or rather his information?] might have been put to use” (ἐχρήσατ᾽)? In the middle voice the latter verb can mean “to consult,” but it would be redundant to say that having questioned him thoroughly one could then have consulted him. The verb more commonly means to consult an oracle. Oidipous’s usage thus provides a meaning that he could not intend: that there may have been some witness, such as a god, who “looked down” upon the killing and who then sent a messenger or accomplice whom one could have consulted. The word “messenger” also recalls Odipous’s comment at the play’s opening that he did not see fit to send a messenger, but came in person, while the double entendre in his speech suggested that he was serving the god as messenger. This interpretive possibility suggests that the audience see Oidipous himself as the messenger who could have been questioned (or could now be questioned) about the event he not only witnessed, but in which he had a hand. This connection might lead the audience to reconsider yet another word over which it has already passed: συμπράκτωρ, which literally means “helper,” “assistant,” “co-actor,” and even “co-perpetrator.” This suggests that perhaps the god was present, not only as a witness, but as a primary party to the deed. This might suggest to the audience that Oidipous was not necessarily acting on his own when he killed his father, but rather that he acted in conjunction with the god to satisfy the prophecy given Laios, that he would be killed by his offspring. This view of the event underscores the fact that when the god says it will be so, he will make it so, which he can do by coopting the actions of men. Alternatively, men can discover what the gods mean to accomplish or have already accomplished by consulting them at the Oracle—the god’s messenger from whom, when one investigates thoroughly, one might learn the truth. This is precisely what Oidipous has done just now—he has sent Kreon to consult Delphi, and now he is questioning the messenger he himself sent so as to learn as thoroughly as possible who the assailant was. Oidipous’s question thus appears to contain its own answer: the assailant (Oidipous) was an ally or assistant of the god. In what sense, then, was Oidipous at that time also a messenger of the god? He is clearly presently acting as the god’s messenger: he is speaking in ways that convey truths to which he himself has no direct access. One message he seems to carry is that the god can make an accomplice or messenger of anyone he chooses whether that person is willing or not, conscious or not of the use to which he is being put. Oidipous’s speech is in this sense oracular. The god appears to the audience to be speaking through Oidipous as co-speaker just as once, at the crossroads, he acted through Oidipous as co-actor. [Gd] [Apamu] [Apcmu]