αὐτόχειρ, “single-handed perpetrator,” is the very word Oidipous himself earlier used to refer to Laios’ killer (l. 229), whom he took to be a criminal. As subject of the verb “smote,” it casts the god into the role of murderer. And yet, while it cannot be appropriate for Oidipous to think of Apollo’s action towards himself in the same terms as he once thought of Laios’ murder, it is ironic that Apollo did contrive Laios’ death. Even more ironically, Oidipous was the instrument of his murder. But the audience now understands that Laios’ death was a necessity that impinged not only upon Laios, but upon Apollo and Oidipous as well. There is another irony in the singular “perpetrator,” for where the witness reported a plurality of killers, Oidipous referred to Laios’ killer in the singular, and now, when Oidipous refers to the god as the perpetrator of his own sufferings in the singular, the fact is that he himself acted as the god’s accomplice. The accomplishment of such deeds is never singular; it depends upon collaboration between gods and mortals. It is perhaps never accurate to say that either a mortal or a god acts as a lone agent. Thus, neither Apollo nor Oidipous should properly be regarded as αὐτόχειρ. If Apollo “smote” Oidipous, he did so by moving him to carry out the investigation into Laios’ killing. The action occurred as a combination of divine and mortal efforts. Tested against another of Oidipous’s actions, the incest with his mother, the term αὐτόχειρ is again found to be a misnomer; what the god accomplished he did not and could not do alone; he required Oidipous, Iokaste, and Thebes to work with him. Thus Oidipous is right to identify Apollo as an agent in his demise, but wrong to attribute the deed to Apollo alone and even more wrong to use the same term for the god that he previously used to characterize the man he took to be a criminal. Oidipous is that criminal, as were Laios and Iokaste, but the crime to which this term pertains has shifted from aggravated assault at the crossroads to impiously lashing out at the god and attempting to defeat his efforts. [Dnc] [P] [Md] As Laios struck Oidipous with a double goad, an instrument selected in part by his own predilections and in part by the god, Oidipous struck back with his own two-pronged instrument: the physical staff in his hand carried the force of divine and mortal action. Had either Oidipous or Laios succeeded in invalidating prophecy, the god would have been dealt a mortal wound. Thus, Oidipous has accurately characterized himself and other mortals who seek to invalidate prophecy as “criminal perpetrators.” In their insistence upon autonomous action they strike a single-handed blow both at the god and at the notion of a cooperative relationship between gods and mortals. [Mpea] In this regard every mortal who resists prophecy can properly be termed an αὐτόχειρ (“self-directed” or “sole-acting” agent). [Mip]