Oidipous’s identification of the choral leader as his friend and support will prompt the audience to assess this relationship for itself. The Chorus may have been loyal, but it has been of little help to Oidipous, for in looking to him for its salvation, it has mirrored the error of his impiety. [Mpea] [P] It pities his physical blindness, but it has failed to see that he has always been blind, and therefore that it has always been and continues to be as blind as he. [Mpei] As it thinks about whether the Chorus has been a true friend to Oidipous, the audience may begin to realize that Apollo does not hate or disrespect Oidipous as he himself thinks and as it might itself have been supposing. [Ad] Apollo’s antipathy towards Oidipous may be more apparent than real, based on the assumption that Apollo’s prophecies and his hand in binding Oidipous over to an unbearable fate must betoken an utter disregard for Oidipous’s well-being. To the extent that Oidipous’s attitudes have rendered him insensible to some of the god’s attempts to communicate with him, however, the god’s actions may not only be just, but appropriate and even necessary for the good of all Thebes, Oidipous included. [Aj] [Mw] If this is the case, then it is necessary to reevaluate the god’s intervention, beginning with its severity, all the while recognizing that behind this severity stands a commitment to save men from their own foibles. The problem is that the god can be of help only when its recipients are willing to cooperate; they must help themselves by doing as the god instructs. [Dnp] This begins when they seek guidance, what to say or do. [Mip] Both the citizenry and its leadership must then join in the determination to do as the god instructs. Having summoned a prophet or sent to Delphi, one cannot ignore, much less work against, the instructions one is given. For when a city and its leadership decline to seek and scrupulously carry out the god’s instruction, they put the god in the position of having to bring them around against their will. [Apamu]