In Greek the question, “what insanity/ Came over you?” ends with the word μανία (madness, insanity); until this word is heard the audience may well understand the question’s subject to be “who?” (τίς) and suppose the Chorus to be asking Oidipous, “Who stepped on/put his foot on/approached you?” to which it may supply the answer long pressing for Oidipous’s recognition: Apollo. When the question ends with the word μανία, however, the audience will find itself having either to correct its first interpretation or, since μανία may be god-sent, to regard it as a manifestation or consequence of Apollo’s intervention, and thus to require no significant change to the anticipated answer. The question arises from the Chorus’s assumption that there should be a rational explanation even for what seems to be an irrational act, such as Oidipous’s stabbing out his own eyes. Because an Athenian audience can be expected to share this expectation, the question that stems from it should prompt the audience to think more carefully about Oidipous’s state of mind and its causes. He has ample reason for a despair deep enough to produce self-destructive violence. The audience will perhaps be able to empathize with him in relation to its own horror to think that it may have underestimated the god, the authenticity of his Oracle at Delphi, the degree of his commitment to uphold his prophetic word, and the extent of his capacity to do so even against stiff resistance. In light of the fact that Iokaste was driven to hang herself by the discovery that her most significant decisions were based on false assumptions, the Athenian audience will now begin to anticipate the trajectory of its own response to a very similar error: its belief that it can defeat the Peloponnesian League and thereby discredit the institution of prophecy at Delphi and throw doubt upon the powers of the god in whose name that institution operates. [Mpea] [Gt-a] [Mi] [Ap] There is another way to interpret Oidipous’s self-blinding; it may have been driven not by the realization of his own error but by his unwavering refusal to allow that the god played a role in arranging for his downfall. He simply will not accept any facts beyond the ones he has discovered for himself, namely: that he killed Laios, that Laios was his father, and that he married his mother. Acceptance of these acts is terrible but tolerable; acceptance of the god’s extensive interventions in his life is worse; it is intolerable. Rather than accept his disillusionment, he begins to cut himself off altogether from reality. For all Oidipous’s apparent commitment to intellectual rigor at any cost to his personal wellbeing, it now appears that he is willing to sacrifice the integrity of his intellect rather than admit to its limitations. [Mpei] [Md] Of the two forms of μανία under consideration, the audience will have preferred the one stemming from disillusionment, for certainly it is better to accept a truth, no matter how bitter, than to welcome delusion. [Mw]