When Oidipous says that he is acting “as if” in his father’s cause the audience knows that Laios really was his father, and he is therefore actually acting in his father’s cause. But it also knows, because Oidipous has just reminded it of this and because he was clearly not acting in his father’s cause when he killed him, that when he brought Laios’s fate down upon his head he was acting in the god’s cause. So, where Oidipous attributes his action on Laios’s behalf to the reasons he has just given, the audience will understand that he is acting more on the god’s behalf and that in fact all of the reasons can be construed quite differently: the god has had to intervene in order to obtain cooperation because the mortal actors put up a stubborn resistance to the god’s express will. This suggests that Laios, Iokaste, and Oidipous have all failed to realize that their first duty is not to self, family, or even city, but to the gods. [P] [Mpei]