Athenian legal terminology is given yet another airing when Oidipous responds to Teiresias’s motion for dismissal by characterizing it as unlawful (οὐτ’ ἔννομ’). The audience may thus continue to have the impression that it is sitting not in the theater but in the court. Couching the testy confrontation between himself and Teiresias in terms of forensic debate may, however, strike the audience as inappropriate, for prophecy is not to be treated as a legal institution. This raises the question, how the testimony of prophets and oracles is to be dealt with within the framework of Athens’ rationalistic legal and political institutions. [Mg] [Mi]