The Chorus’s claim never to have seen worse suffering challenges the audience to consider whether it has seen its equal. Is anyone known to have worked with such conviction and integrity for the common good only to end in abject failure and to discover his or her efforts to lie at the root of the city’s devastation? The Athenian state is threatened by loss of empire in a war against a foe that is strong, determined, numerous, and well-supplied, while a plague has been running rampant through the population encamped within the town’s walls. Even against the Persians, circumstances could not have looked grimmer. Thus, at the level of public suffering, the audience may well never have known worse than its own present set of circumstances. Is there an individual in Athens, then, to whom responsibility for this catastrophe must be attributed despite his having made every effort to better the state? The audience might measure its leadership against these criteria, but in a democratic state in which the citizens share responsibility for decisions such as whether to go to war or make peace, members of the audience must include themselves in this consideration and find that, if Athens does not already measure up to Oidipous’s wretchedness, this may only be because its errors are not as far revealed as his. The Athenian audience may find itself considering Oidipous’s demise, then, as a preview of what may be to come for Athens if the city remains on its present course. [Gt-a] [Mw] [Mg]