Responding to Oidipous’s judgment that if there is something worse than “bad” he attained it, the Chorus confesses that it does not know how it might say that he made the right decision (βεβουλεῦσθαι), presumably to blind himself. This form of the verb can be read either as middle voice: “you decided” (as the Chorus can be presumed to mean it) or passive: “you were well advised.” [Gd] The play long ago thematized these two possibilities when the priest pointed out that in defeating the Sphinx, Oidipous acted either on his own advice or that of a god (ll. 37-9), and while he has been thought in fact to have been capable of solving the Sphinx’s riddle on his own, the audience has become aware that the god must have orchestrated that event, which stretched from the demonic beast’s arrival at Thebes’ gates, thereby prompting Laios to depart for Delphi, to the drunken reveler’s comment, which prompted Oidipous also to depart for Delphi at almost the same time as his father, to Oidipous taking the road that would carry him from Delphi to Thebes, and ending with the design of the riddle itself, which was uniquely suited to Oidipous’s special sensitivity to bipedalism. [Apaon] [Apamu] [Apcma] Awareness of Apollo’s engagement may lead one to infer that Apollo was inimical to Oidipous. The ambiguity in βεβουλεῦσθαι can be interpreted to mean precisely this: Oidipous was not well advised by the Oracle at Delphi.] But there the Chorus would be wrong, for he was advised well but responded to the advice poorly. This insight satisfies the question just raised by the pun on his name: what he did not know was how properly to consult with the Pythia. [Mip] [Every Delphic consultation must be premised upon the tacit admission of one’s insufficiency and a tacit declaration of faith in the god’s capacity to direct mortal action to the best possible outcome. [Mp] [Ap] One may not infer from unacceptable instructions (as Oidipous does) that Apollo is ill disposed towards one. [Ad] Oidipous was in fact well advised, but choosing rather to take matters into his own hands and steer his own course, he ended up on the worst possible path. That the Chorus is unable to see how well Delphi advised Oidipous is because it shares his limitations. The audience can anticipate that Thebes’ troubles will not soon be over, an inference for which the myth offers solid support. The same applies to Athens, because even if its leadership should soon leave power (Pericles may at the date of the play’s performance already have perished of plague), Apollo will not permit the city’s troubles to pass away until Athens seeks advice, manages the communication well, and acts accordingly. [Gt-a] [Mw]