The seer’s wording here is convoluted; it reads like a riddle that reveals two facts at once: Oidipous is the killer whose trail he has been following and Laios is the father with whom he once was seeking to meet. This suggests that Teiresias is thinking not only of the Delphic instruction to Oidipous (via Kreon) that he discover and punish Laios’ killer, but also of the Delphic utterance delivered directly to Oidipous himself informing him of the necessity that he kill his father. Informing Oidipous that he is both subject and object of the Oracle’s most recent instruction, Teiresias’s statement also proclaims that the object of the one prophecy is the same as the object of the other, simply named with a different referent: “father” and “king.” That the seer’s present utterance contains a riddle suggests that the earlier prophecy may also have presented one. Given the fact that Oidipous is already expressing frustration with the seer’s language, the possibility that he may fail to understand what has been said might be extended to previous prophetic utterances and riddles: both what was said to him at Delphi and by the Sphinx, whose riddle he managed to solve without realizing that it led to the marriage with his mother. [Gd] [Mipd]