In using the word ἀλκή Oidipous responds directly to the priest’s pleas (l. 41) and the Chorus’s importuning of Athena (l. 189) for protection against the disease from which Thebes is suffering. Yet how can Oidipous present himself as a defense against plague? Nobody in the Greek world possessed medical knowledge adequate to combat plague. Therefore, Oidipous can hope to be effective only insofar as the plague’s causes are not of a medical nature. Both he and the audience now know this plague to stem from pollution, which is to say: from a religious cause. That is what he summoned the people to hear. So, if Oidipous views himself as an ἀλκή in this matter, it cannot be as a metaphorical tower or warrior hero, but in the sense that he undertakes to oversee the performance of whatever purifications are required by the god. He offers himself as the executor of divine will. The audience already knows, of course, that this is precisely what is in process. What is odd is that Oidipous’s stance towards divine instruction is conflicted; he means to carry out the instructions that Kreon brought from Delphi, but yet he regards himself as the answer to the people’s prayers. [Mpea] [Mp] [Mip]