The truth that Teiresias says he rears stands in contrast to the children incestuously begotten by Oidipous. The nature of Teiresias’s truth, as he himself characterizes it, is that it is bound to prevail. In thus laying claim to the superiority of his own conception, Teiresias seems to weigh the relative strength of Oidipous’s utterances against his own. Oidipous is a most vigorous man physically, mentally, and politically. Indeed, the existence of his offspring is indicative of a sexual vigor that can be traced to his union in marriage with Iokaste and so by metonymy back to his defeat of the Sphinx, thus joining his sexual energy with his intellectual mettle and his intrepidity. The many manifestations of Oidipous’s strength and vigor are diminished, however, in relation to the priest’s superior vision, which Oidipous has just belittled just as in the past he slighted Delphi by acting upon his own determination to demonstrate the powerlessness of the god’s speech. The audience knows, of course, that, just as the pronouncements of the Oracle have already proven true, the robust truth to which Teiresias lays claim will eventually prevail over Oidipous and his conceptions; his sons will one day take one another’s lives and his daughters will bury their own hopes for happiness together with their brothers’ bodies. [Apa] [Apc] [Mp] [Md]