In calling his hands “fraternal” Oidipous may simply be using an established metaphor for an anatomical pair. In another sense, however, his hands are extensions of himself and so related to his daughters as siblings through the doubling of relationships resulting from incest. His language thus continues to smack strongly of an impropriety that, given the opportunities he has been given to see relationships as they really are, can hardly be innocent. He nevertheless continues to compound the problem by wishing now to touch his sister-daughters with those hands polluted by the ways in which they touched his wife-mother and slew his stranger-father. In their participation in all of these horrible relations, these hands have fulfilled all of the prophecies bearing upon him; they have worked against him as they worked on behalf of the god. [Apamu] Because Oidipous cannot mentally or physically distance himself from them, they continue to contaminate all relationships—they threaten everyone in sight of them, and the members of the audience may feel intense disgust to be looking upon them while thinking of what they have done for and to the person to whom they are attached. The horrors to which Oidipous’s hands have been party make revolting his hope that he might defeat Apollo. [Mpei] [P] That Athens may still be acting on such an assumption, and perhaps the suggestion that its hope for a victory over former allies, brothers against the Persians, will have given the audience a horrifying premonitory image of its own ghastly crimes. [Mj] [Mw]