What Oidipous mutters as he puts out his eyes is difficult to understand; one can more easily anticipate his meaning than find it expressed in his words. He seems to be speaking riddles. He appears to begin by explaining that he is putting out his eyes so that they not see him; he presumably finds the sight of himself intolerable. But of course it is not his visage that is unbearable, but the countenance of what he has done. It remains unclear whether he is thinking of incest, murder, his failed attempt to resist the god, or all of these things. If he means to clarify by saying “what I have been suffering,” it is unclear whether he holds himself or the god responsible for his misery. Is he blinding himself because he sees all too well how things stand or in order that he not have to be a witness to how things stand? Adding that his eyes should not see the evils he has been doing, it is again unclear whether by this Oidipous means parricide and incest or resistance to prophecy. If the former then he might still be viewing himself as a victim of the god; if the latter he might now have achieved an insight that has previously eluded him. The lack of clarity puts the audience in the position of having to decide for itself, and this decision is anything but distant or inconsequential, for if the audience blames the god, it indulges in an impiety that makes it every bit as reprehensible as Oidipous, Iokaste, and Laios. If the audience is not to call upon itself the same kind of terrible destruction visited upon the members of the house of Cadmos, it must take responsibility for its own opposition to the god and reverse it. As it thus relies upon the insights regarding proper attitudes towards the gods developed in response to this play, the audience finds itself able to solve the riddles in Oidipous’s speech. [Apcma] [Mpea] [P] [Mw]