Oidipous, whom the audience can see is not thinking clearly, has only one explanation for Teiresias’s refusal—willingness to betray the city. But the issue of betrayal and loyalty points the audience towards awareness that the seer must maintain loyalty to the god even when this comes at the town’s expense. If the plague was sent by Apollo, it must be clear that it will not be lifted until the god’s purpose in sending it has been achieved. Thus, while the citizens are bent upon doing everything in their power to rid themselves of the plague, they remain unaware of the larger context in which the plague plays a role. This, then, would be another sense in which neither they nor Oidipous are thinking clearly and why Teiresias is unable to help them. The town and its leaders must understand that in order to be of use to them, prophets must subordinate themselves to the gods whose messages they deliver. The seer’s loyal service to the god must come before his loyal service to the city. Without the former, there can be no benefit from the prophet’s services. There can be no question of the seer’s disloyalty to the city; even to question it signals the town’s unpreparedness to receive the help of its gods through the medium of prophecy. It is this unpreparedness, and not the prophet or the god, to which responsibility for the town’s destruction must be given. [Mpea] [Md] [Mw]