While it now appears that Oidipous’s method is bound to lead him in the wrong direction, the audience may nevertheless observe the integrity, energy, efficiency, and conviction with which he proceeds. [Me] [Md] Yet it is not only the sole survivor’s misdirection that presently leads Oidipous astray, for Oidipous while himself strangely corrects the number of attackers from plural to singular, he at the same time propounds a new error of his own, for he mistakenly assumes that the “bandits” mentioned by Kreon cannot be motivated by money carried by the victim on his person, but must have been motivated by money paid to them by some person or faction within Thebes. What is the reasoning that leads to this conclusion? While Kreon has apparently taken from the sole survivor’s false report the identification of the attackers as bandits, Oidipous nevertheless correctly rejects the supposition that robbery was the primary motive. If he assumes (again wrongly) that the king would have been properly guarded, thus making an attack on him too risky for robbers, Oidipous finds it plausible that someone in Thebes wanted the king dead and was willing to pay a band of assassins a sum of money sufficient to make it worth their undertaking the risks involved. Accepting the explanation that money motivated the attackers, Oidipous proceeds as if the assassination plot has been established. Since the audience, however, cannot for a moment forget that Oidipous is the killer, it is in a position to observe that Oidipous’s reasoning is leading him ever farther astray, for it knows the inferences he has made, no matter how plausible, are false. Oidipous’s killing of Laios stands as proof positive that money and power are by no means the only motivations for violent crime. [Mpea]