The πρόξενος is one who serves as the local representative of a foreign state to perform business and diplomatic functions on its behalf. Thus, through his use of the verb προὐξένησαν Oidipous styles his hands as emissaries. He seems to mean that, when they stabbed out his eyes, his hands were working as agents of his daughters. This analogy breaks down, however, in view of the daughters’ neither having had a direct role in commissioning their father’s actions nor in benefitting in any way from his blindness. If he means that the impropriety of their relationship prompted his action, this still strains the idea that his hands are acting as their agents. Oidipous’s status as a foreign or native-born member of the government has, however, been at issue earlier in the play (ll. 451-2), but it is clear that if he represented a foreign entity, it was not Corinth. It was Apollo, rather, who directed him to Thebes, and it has been in service of Apollo, albeit without his awareness of it, that he has been acting ever since his arrival. He is thus right to regard himself, and by extension his hands, as πρόξενοι, but rather than placing himself and his language in service of a power that cannot speak for itself directly, he has erroneously regarded himself as the agent of his own moral imperative. The god therefore acts and speaks through him, as he appears to be doing now, without his knowledge. [Apamu] The gesture of putting his hands at his daughters’ service only reveals the disingenuity or naivete of his claim to care for them, because it was he who plunged them into difficulties. This will instruct the Athenian audience that if there is any question of the god’s need for a πρόξενος, the city would be wise willingly to put its hands into his service, which it can do by seeking his instruction at Delphi and then doing as told. To act otherwise is to work harm for its own children. Then to tell them that it did so out of love would be pathetically blind and self-serving. [Mpei] [Gt-a] [Apama] [Mip]