With this rhetorical question Oidipous means to suggest that there is no escape for shameless behavior, but the audience knows that it is he and not Teiresias who will soon serve as this wisdom’s most notorious example. And where Oidipous appears to be threatening personally to visit punishment upon Teiresias, the audience will understand that the god is himself even now in the process of visiting punishment upon Oidipous for his impious words and deeds. Where Oidipous’s view expresses confidence in the reach of justice, by which he would be thinking of the civil justice for whose enforcement he has responsibility, the audience will understand that while the judgment passed on Oidipous may employ public institutions such as the Oracle at Delphi for its execution, its direction originates on a plane quite apart from that of any institution whether civic or pan-Helenic. Oidipous’s belief in the efficacy of his own personal agency must thus itself affront the god. [Gd] [Mpei] [P]