What the god’s devices achieve (when they work) is “remembrance of ills” (μνήμη κακῶν). The word κακῶν will remind the audience of what has emerged as a central issue in its judgment of Oidipous: his ability or inability to discern proper from improper action, for he still believes that he has never knowingly and willingly done wrong. Yet, where earlier in the play he declared that he would be κακός not to do everything the god made clear, he has for years now been doing everything in his power not to perform actions whose necessity the god once tried to specify. So certain is he of his own moral compass that it has never occurred to him that it is not on its own a guarantor either of success or even of good judgment. Through Oidipous’s example the audience is now becoming mindful of the fact that the intention to act in accord with divine law is a necessary but insufficient condition for success. [Md] [P] One cannot avoid doing wrong simply by deciding not to; divine guidance is sometimes also required. [Mpei] [Mi] The goad that has now made itself felt on Oidipous’s body stands as a vivid emblem of an error that arose when, immediately upon deciding to act independently of god and prophecy forever to turn his back on Corinth, a physical goad crashed down upon his head, which provoked him to kill the man the god needed him to kill, the man whom the god instructed him he must kill, but whom he had determined never to harm. Now again the goad has made itself felt, but this time with one purpose only; to make it clear that his commitment to “right” action in defiance of the god was a contradiction that the god was bound to correct. The fact is that the god will compel one to do whatever the god knows to be necessary regardless how one feels about it. [Dn] [Apamu] [Md] The choice is not whether to commit the required action, but whether to do it willingly. [Apama] The ill action that Apollo is goading Oidipous to recall, then, is neither the parricide nor the incest but the decision to act according to his own sense of right and wrong even when the god was at pains to make it clear that his judgment was based on ignorance. [Mpei] Similarly anyone, whether Oidipous or a member of the Athenian audience, who believes that good judgments can be made without divine assistance will require a further application of the god’s double-headed goad. [Apc] [Aj]