As the staffperson explains, these things are offensive to the gods (ἀνόσια). The refusal to articulate them points to the problem, however, of determining what is impious—is it the relationships that the god himself arranged or the mortal truculence that made them necessary? Since Apollo demanded the parricide, its performance cannot have been impious. Nor should it be improper to speak about what the god ordained and arranged, for the god’s purpose in so doing must, as Homer explicitly says, be to reveal to all mankind what Oidipous has wrought. So the Chorus’s sense of propriety puts it at odds with the god, whose myth-making efforts suggest that he requires thorough public discussion of Oidipous’s fate and its relationship to his attitudes and actions. If Athens sees its own suffering in light of Oidipous’s, then the god can be expected to require a thorough public airing of Athens’ own possible fate and the relationship between it and those attitudes and actions most reminiscent of Thebes and its ruling family. Sophocles’ play presents itself as an invitation to just such public speech. [Md] [Mg] [Mp] [Apa]