The awestruck Chorus sees in the report the communication of a “necessity” (χρέος) to which it anticipates its own subjection. Taking the content of the divine message to be inescapable, the Chorus brings home to the audience a distinction between Thebes and Athens, for the latter has responded to the report of a prophecy promising Sparta victory in the war with Athens by determining to prosecute the war with full vigor, thereby displaying its belief that report of a prophecy was susceptible to error, misinterpretation, or inauthenticity, as if the report not only might not communicate what must of necessity occur, but may be a fabrication or even a confidence trick perpetrated by Sparta or a Delphic priesthood sympathetic to Sparta. [Dn] [Gt-a] In considering that a necessity conveyed by prophecy may be either “new” or “cycling back,” the Chorus indicates itself to be clearly on the lookout for long-term patterns. The audience may follow suit by looking for old necessities to set beside the new one. The sphinx is already on its mind, and like the plague in Thebes (but not Athens), it occasioned an embassy to Delphi. As the audience knows, the embassy undertaken by Laios resulted in his death, and in the context of “necessity,” his death can be understood to have been required by the prophecies that had been given him, warning that, should he engage in intercourse with his wife, he must be killed by the child born of that union. If, as seems to be the case, Athens has decided against a consultation, and if there is a necessity about which Delphi might provide information, Athens will not discover what it is.
As it thinks about necessities bearing on Thebes and Oidipous, the audience may well recall Homer’s declaration that Oidipous’s regicide, parricide, and incest will soon be made known to all. This could well be the answer to the Chorus’s question, and it affirms that the Chorus’s thoughts are on the right track. Yet, the Chorus’s knowledge is clearly subject to limitations of which the audience is free; the Chorus does not know to which past events present circumstances may be linked. Appreciating the advantage it obtains from its privileged knowledge, the audience will regard the present report from Delphi with respect, and if, as it will already have supposed, Apollo may employ means like sphinx and plague to press mortals to consult him at Delphi, the report just arrived in Thebes is one whose delivery the god contrived to accomplish something necessary, such as the revelation of Oidipous’s regicide, parricide, and incest. Given the plague in Athens, the audience can infer it to be the god’s way of summoning an embassy for a consultation that the city might otherwise be disposed to forego. Athens should, like Oidipous, overcome its reservations about the integrity and authenticity of a Delphic report and resolve to send an embassy to Delphi to obtain one. [Gm] [Apcma] [Apaon] [Gt-a]