When Oidipous says, “if there be some ill (κακόν) ranked still higher than ill, then Oidipous achieved it,” it is not clear whether he means his sufferings are greater than any others or that his behavior is more ignominious than any other. The word he uses for the comparative, however, literally means “more senior” or “older” (πρεσβύτερον), and since his mother and father are literally his seniors, the audience may hear him to say that his sufferings are greater or his crimes graver than theirs. Who suffers more is hard to say; Iokaste took her own life, Laios died a swift death, and Oidipous will live on in blindness, but knowing that he slew his father and fathered children on his mother. Turning to the judgment of deeds, the audience may find that Oidipous appears to be more just than his father, because where his parents readily committed infanticide, he committed himself to avoid parricide and incest. The parents’ crime, however, was not the infanticide but their disobedience to Apollo. If Oidipous’s deeds are in fact more ignominious than theirs, it must be due to a greater degree of disobedience. His intense commitment to avoid parricide and incest presumably set him more sharply in conflict with Apollo than their flagrant disregard for the prohibition on marital intercourse. They thought they could simply ignore Apollo to indulge in their pleasures; Oidipous was willing to sacrifice his pleasures in order to avoid committing actions that were objectionable to him, but that the god required. In his judgment, Apollo was immoral; what he demanded was reprehensible. His view of Apollo is far worse than his parents’; they see Apollo as weak, but they knew the immorality lay with them. Divine justice is senior to mortal justice; it must be given precedent. This means that mortals are obliged to consult Delphi and, far from objecting to what Delphi instructs, submitting to that instruction as to a higher law and a higher justice. For any mortal genuinely committed to justice, there is no alternative to seeking and following divine instruction, no matter to what action it might lead. [Mj] [Aj] [Mpei] [Mip]