Oidipous assumes that if no one speaks up, the motive preventing disclosure must be fear for self or family. The audience, however, knows that the reason the “self” does not speak up is ignorance. [Mpei] Oidipous’s assumption raises this question: how can the man (or men) who killed Laios not know it? The answer is: he knows that he killed a man, but he does not know that that man was Laios, Thebes’ king and his own father. And yet prophecy foretold that he would kill his father, and Kreon has just told him that Thebes’ king was killed en route to Delphi immediately before Oidipous arrived (from Delphi) in Thebes. Oidipous should suspect both that he may have killed Laios and that Laios was his father. That he does not suspect the latter is due to his confidence that prophecy could be averted. That he does not suspect the former must be due to a conviction that he cannot have done anything he did not intend to do. The audience knows both these convictions to be ill founded: prophecy cannot be averted and one’s actions can have unintended consequences. [Mpea]