Admonishing Oidipous to execute the sentence upon himself “for being the unholy polluter of this land” (ὡς ὄντι … μιάστορι) Teiresias echoes Oidipous’s curse upon the one “being the pollution” (ὡς μιάσματος /… ὄντος ll. 241-2). This formulation, already odd as a genitive absolute, is made even more so now because it is expressed in the dative case, presumably in order to reduce the ambiguity of a sequence of too many accusatives governed by two different constructions. Why, rather than changing the formulation, does Teiresias seem to prefer shifting to novel and therefore notably awkward grammar? Perhaps because he finds it important to adhere to a precision in the language coming directly from the god, who reportedly said that “[t]he state’s contamination (μίασμα) . . . was begotten in this country” (l. 97). The linguistic element common to these statements is the characterization “pollution/polluter.” Indeed, double entendre in the speech to which Teiresias is responding underscores the mis-conceptions in which the family has engaged. The country in which Oidipous and Iokaste incestuously conceived their children and in which Laios and Iokaste illicitly conceived Oidipous is now manifesting a crisis of reproduction. Teiresias’s care not to change the word for pollution suggests that the crime for which Oidipous must be punished is not necessarily his killing of Laios per se. The god himself, then, as suggested by the language used both by his Oracle at Delphi and Teiresias, appears to be at pains not to identify Laios’ killing as the source of pollution. Holding tenaciously to the god’s formulation enables Teiresias both to stay true to the god’s express viewpoint and to avoid overstepping his apparent mandate to speak—or keep silent—on the god’s behalf. This insight instructs the audience to shift its own attention to contamination and to look beyond murder and incest as its source. Given the generational palimpsest, the pollution seems rather to be the expression of a family trait. The trait manifests itself in both Laios and Oidipous through their improper sexual union with the same woman. Looking once more at Laios from this perspective, it is easy to see that the pollution did not originate in intercourse with his wife, which was legal and customary. It nevertheless had been repeatedly proscribed by the god through prophecy. It was not so much their sexual passion itself as the fact that they preferred to give in to it rather than heed the god’s word that necessitated Laios’ death at his son’s hands. This explains why Oidipous’s killing of Laios is not punishable per se—the god in fact required it of Oidipous. Unlike Laios, however, whose passion was primarily sexual, Oidipous’s union with Iokaste results from the laudable impulse to avoid doing ill. Oidipous is in this regard utterly unlike his father. In both father and son, however, the connection to prophecy is strikingly similar: the father is unwilling to heed the god’s prophetic word while the son sets out to make sure that it is never realized. Judged by the motivations that drive them to intercourse with Iokaste, Oidipous is the better man. Judged by the way in which they regard the god, Oidipous’s crime is the more serious. The city’s reproductive dysfunction is thus traceable to the increasing impiety in the way its successive rulers respond to prophecy, moving from ignoring it to seeking actively to thwart it. [Aj] [Md] [P]