In the audience’s mind, the alternative between “chancing well together with the god or having fallen down” has already been decided. Indeed, πεπτωκότες couched in the perfect corresponds more nearly to the truth than Oidipous realizes, for he is already fallen; he cannot prove “fortunate.” All that remains is for his fall to be made manifest to him and to the people of Thebes, whom he is presently summoning. For the audience there is a special pathos in seeing Oidipous being made to serve as the agent of his own unmasking, for he has committed himself to act as the god’s ally, and therefore seems deserving of better treatment at the god’s hands. But not only does he act on behalf of the god in beginning to raise his hand against himself, his every word seems to prophesy, as it were, to the audience, which has the perspective instantly and clearly to understand his words in all their meanings. Double entendre effectively bestows upon him the gift of mantic speech and upon the Athenian spectators within the theater of Dionysos the power of proper interpretation. What the audience cannot yet be expected to understand is why this man, whose intentions seem entirely good, should deserve such terrible treatment. Granted, he has arrogated to himself the god’s space, the god’s powers, the god’s language, and the god’s responsibilities, but this all because the god has not made himself manifest to Oidipous and Thebes, while the plague must seem to Oidipous only to demonstrate that in fact the god cannot or will not step in. The audience, on the other hand, must now suppose that this is entirely the wrong view of the plague, which seems in fact to be of the god’s devising. The plague, then, should not be taken as a sign of divine impotence or unconcern, but of the god’s active engagement in a cause that must be presumed to be just, even if it is not at all clear how this is possible. [Md] [Apcmu] [Apaon] [Aj] [Mipd]