Taking full responsibility for having denied himself access to the town’s sacred paraphernalia, Oidipous hearkens back to his earlier edicts calling for the people of Thebes to shun contact with Laios’ killer and exclude him from participation in religious rites, and yet even as he imposes a religious sanction and employs clearly religious terminology to describe himself as “irreverent” and “unclean” or “blood-tainted,” he seems to have lost sight of the fact that those edicts were meant as an affirmation of instructions brought by Kreon from Delphi, in issuing which Apollo clearly assumed responsibility for determining the appropriate sanctions for Laios’ killing and lifting Thebes’ plague. In blinding himself Oidipous has improperly arrogated to himself the responsibility for punishing Laios’ killer, and in so doing he occludes the god’s direct interest and active participation in the execution of justice. [Md] [P] [Aj] By blinding himself he has chosen moreover to supersede both Apollo’s instructions and his own edicts in their support, thereby implicitly asserting the supremacy of his own judiciary and executive powers. [Mg] [Ap] The exercise of personal power appears to be of greater moment to him than conformity with justice as defined by a god. He seems even now to think of the god as a nonentity, a being in name only, incapable of speech, judgment, or action. Oidipous does not perceive that the “impiety” for which he claims to hold himself responsible has any bearing on actual gods; it is a mere word that has no meaning. His use of it is utterly disingenuous. And this underlines the profundity of his errror; Oidipous is even now setting himself ahead of the gods, relegating their role to verbal window dressing for his own authority. The relative article τῶν (l. 1379) raises the question, of what the city’s privileged leaders have denied themselves by ordering the expulsion of those whom they presume to be enemies of their power, and when the gods unmask their impiety, the citizenry will find that they have deprived the town of its defenses, themselves of the traditional ritual use of sacred paraphernalia necessary to cleanse themselves of their errors, and the next generation of their future. [Mw] The list of the article’s possible antecedents might also include the gods (δαιμόνων) themselves. For an audience that has become aware that Oidipous turned his back on Delphi, including the Oracle and the god whose speech it mediates, the god’s alienation is a meaningful possibility. Indeed, both words that he uses to characterize himself (ἀσεβῆ and ἄναγνον) are alpha privatives that negate his piety and purity, qualities lost through resisting the god, whether directly, by seeking to subvert prophecy, or indirectly, by shedding blood not condoned by divine instruction. [Mip] Considering that Oidipous’s resistance to prophecy is closely associated with his subsequent exclusion from the life of family and polis, the audience can now understand this relationship not to be incidental but causal; his alienation from family, city, and gods stems from his breaking with the god, which occurs whenever he embraces his own proclivity for self-reliance. [Md]