τλάμων, heard just moments ago (ll. 1310) can again be taken to mean either “daring” or “suffering” (cf. m1308). Oidipous may thus be taking full responsibility for putting out his own eyes, killing Laios, or both, or he may be bemoaning his misfortune or ill treatment, perhaps even proclaiming that no “criminal” killed Laios, but rather that in performing the deed he was himself a victim. In either case, Oidipous’s focus is himself: ἐγώ. Knowing that his own motives have been to avoid killing his father and to serve Thebes by finding Laios’ killer, he may again (as when the god seemed to dishonor him at Delphi) believe himself to be unjustly treated by the god. Such a judgment accepts the god to be an agent of injustice. [Aj] The audience, now considering the god’s actions to be well intentioned, necessary, therefore just, will recognize Oidipous’s judgment to be an impiety that requires correction through the application of divine justice. [P] The truth as the audience has come to know it is thus better expressed by the second interpretation of Oidipous’s expression; he had the temerity (and effrontery) to take on both the god’s word and the god’s capacity to realize it. What consequently happened was thus done neither entirely by the god nor by himself; there was in fact no single-handed perpetrator. He had to be made to serve as the unwitting agent of a god who required his hands to realize the prophecy given Laios. He also had to be made to serve as Apollo’s unwitting agent in realizing his own misinterpretation of the prophecy instructing him to take Laios’ life. Thus Oidipous can be heard to declare now on the god’s behalf: “There was no single-handed perpetrator other than myself, but I in my effrontery struck at the god, with the consequence that I struck Laios, struck Iokaste, struck Thebes, and now have struck out my own eyes.” [Gd] When he bested the Sphinx Oidipous’s temerity seemed to make a hero, even a god of him, but in the end, just as his parents’ temerity crippled him, it plunged him blind and raving to the depths of human miserly. So, if Oidipous ascribes to himself the quality of boldness, the audience will read his apparent strength of character as the sign of an understanding so flawed that it denigrates gods, mortals, and the bonds that join them. The boldness required for Oidipous to blind himself expresses a preference to do himself irreparable harm rather than look upon the evidence that he has fundamentally misjudged his god, his own actions, and the circumstances to which they were a response. In such strength there is no nobility, only destructive foolishness and arrogance. [Dnc] [Mw] [Mpea]