The Chorus is crediting Athena, Artemis, and Apollo with an earlier salvation, which raises the question, whether any of them intervened to save Thebes from the Sphinx, for this deed was thought to have been accomplished by Oidipous acting alone, aided only by his personal powers of reason. Such effective powers would render prayer superfluous in this matter. Just so, leading Athenians took the position that they would, by dint of their superior powers, save Athens from the twin crises of plague and war. On the other hand, while it may not be apparent that any god had a hand in ridding Thebes of the Sphinx, the audience has already been prompted to consider that the Sphinx could well have served Apollo as a portable Delphi. Furthermore, while it did not appear to anyone in Thebes that Oidipous had the help of a god in answering the riddle of the Sphinx, the priest’s mentioning it has raised that question, and just now the audience has been treated to a demonstration of how it might have been accomplished even without Oidipous’s awareness. The audience is again looking at the issue of piety as it relates to prayer and reliance on the gods for assistance, but now with the knowledge that independence of mortal action may be a misperception. [Mp] [Mw] [Apa]