Leaving the land unharmed is one of the two penalties Delphi specified for Laios’ killer. Oidipous expresses the punishment as if it were relatively light and nothing of which to be afraid. Is Oidipous offering leniency to obtain a confession? Given that Oidipous is that killer and yet knows nothing of his own responsibility in committing the crime, no incentive can induce him to expose himself as Laios’ killer. He is working from the false assumption that the perpetrator knows that he killed Laios. Oidipous also expresses the sentence as if it were his own to pronounce; he seems to occlude the god’s role in pronouncing it. Even when he knows the god to be involved, he speaks as if he were acting on his own behalf. This might suggest that his ignorance of his own involvement in the crime and his consequent inability to identify the killer are based on a similar error; failure to recognize that when he speaks, he may be speaking for the god, and when he acts, that he may be acting for the god. [Mpea] [Apcmu] [Apaon]