The rhetorical question seems to express a morbid interest in the sordid details of Iokaste’s incestuous relations with her son, yet the use of plowing as a metaphor for sexual intercourse (where this was only one implication of θαλαμηπόλωι) underscores for the audience the point that Thebes, whose population the Chorus represents, is still suffering from a blight on crops. These literal furrows have not kept silence; they have made themselves heard in the only way they can: by refusing to yield a harvest. The problem is not that Thebes’ fields or the gods who bless them with fertility have not expressed themselves, but that the citizenry has taken insufficient notice of their expression. Instead, the Chorus allows itself to be so distracted by the scandal freshly broken out among its royals that it utterly fails to take responsibility for, or even to address, its responsibility for its own very serious predicament. The audience’s frustration with the Chorus should prompt it, however, to recognize any parallels that may exist in its own response to plague and to direct its own efforts along a more promising path: communication with its gods. [Mpe] [Gt-a] [Mi]