The jumble of language reads like a riddle, but one created not by a superior intelligence but sown rather by error. Father slew father, plowed where he had sprouted, gained children from equals from whom he had been born. The girls’ father is alive, yet the ills that have happened to him began with his father’s attempt to have him killed, which he did because he had given him life. Iokaste is named “she who bore”; she bore Oidipous as well as his daughters. The furrow overseeded by its own fruits bore daughters and rendered them socially barren, unmarriageable because of the way they were gotten. This obscurity persists in Oidipous’s reference to her from whom he sprang as “equals.” The use of the plural encourages the audience to understand that more than one was involved in the granddaughters’ conception: in this Iokaste is equal to herself, two generations are folded into one. The generations collapse. Insofar as Laios failed in his effort to become the killer of his granddaughters’ infant father, he is an accessory to their conception. For had Laios obeyed the god, neither Oidipous nor his children would be born. Similarly, it seems possible that, had Oidipous properly interrogated the Oracle, he may not have married his mother but only been reunited with her. In that case, she would not have killed herself. As it is, generations of resistance to prophecy fold the family’s procreative and murderours activities onto each other. The confusion in Oidipous’s language reflects a the a confusion that parallels or expresses the pollution of impious dealings. Unraveling the confusion seems as problematic as washing away the pollution. In his failure properly to instruct his daughters, Oidipous does nothing to prevent their taking up the family’s impious attitudes and carrying them forward into the future. This riddle might leave the audience with the sense that, if it cannot unravel this riddle, it will also carry pollution with it into the next generation. [Mip] [Mp] [Mw]