Oidipous’s impiety is underscored by his appeal to Teiresias “in the gods’ name” not to turn his back on Oidipous and the city. His plea is based entirely on an appeal to the gods, but his own words calling upon the seer to act in the gods’ name miss the point that the seer has his gift of insight from the gods and that it is therefore Oidipous’s words, not those of Teiresias, that are harmful to the town. It escapes Oidipous’s notice that he himself never puts pious respect for the god’s intermediaries before his own reasoned comprehension of circumstances. For him, what is pious is what stands in conformity with his own understanding, which the audience has been finding to be consistently faulty. It is most clearly wrong, however, to define piety by what one sees as best according to one’s own judgment. [P] [Mea] [Md]