Using the present tense to describe the past and referring to Iokaste with the demonstrative ἣδε as if she were standing close at hand, Oidipous appears to be recreating the scene of the infant’s transfer. Oddly, however, he does not assign as much as a pronoun to the baby, who is in fact now present in his own person, which leaves the audience to wonder which pronoun Oidipous might consider using: “him” or “me”? Does the pronoun’s omission suggest that Oidipous is presently uncertain from what perspective to view the infant (and himself)? He must be in the process of trying to see the baby as himself, and yet he appears not yet to be capable of this. The audience might infer from this blockage that he has already tested the implications of the baby’s identification and found the results intolerable. If that baby is himself, then he has committed the parricide and incest that he has spent his adult life trying to avoid. His entire effort has been nullified along with the propositions on what it was based: that prophecy might be voided if his parents were Polybos and Merope. Upon this supposition he has wagered everything—his entire being, the sum total of his life’s value. This alone has given him a chance to resist the prophecy and thereby to counter the god. So audacious was his wager that, should this supposition prove false, there can be no possible recovery, no correction, no contrition, and no redemption. Knowing of his error, the audience can observe the foolhardiness of such a course of action, especially if there was an alternative, and there were in fact two, namely: further consideration of the possibility that Polybos and Merope are not his parents, but if they are (or if the first option escapes notice), submission to the god for guidance even in what looks to be a hopeless situation. [Md] [Mipd] [P]