Oidipous’s threat is ironic because it is he, not Teiresias, who will not escape unpunished. In the middle of this sentence lies the word δίς: double. Meaning to warn Teiresias not to say twice what he should not have said once, Oidipous’s words take on a double meaning, for double can also be joined to the pains, and thus to raise the question whether what seems to be double might in fact, as Oidipous wants to insist, be single. Considering that Oidipous is at this moment failing to hear in the seer’s words the doubled truth stemming from two Delphic prophecies, his fault lies not in what he says but in what he fails to hear. While the pains of Laios’ death and the killer’s punishment are double, both prophecies refer to one incident: the killing of Laios, whose single-handed cause was Oidipous. This extraordinarily insightful observation makes the point that the plural killers (either singular or plural can be heard in the previous line) were in fact single, but it goes further to suggest that all present woes result from a single cause. It is also problematic for Oidipous to blame Teiresias for smugness when the seer made it clear that he preferred not to speak. Oidipous wrongly believes that the prophet enjoys his message of condemnation. When prophets speak to him Oidipous proves to have limited listening comprehension, and the unpleasantness that he does understand he incorrectly attributes to malice. Given Delphi’s express support for Sparta over Athens, it seems likely that Athens may similarly have been interpreting the prophecy as an indication of the Oracle’s malice. In light of Oidipous’s mistaken response to Teiresias, the Athenian audience may pause to reconsider both its own assumptions about the recent prophecy and its judgment of Delphi for issuing it. [Gd] [Mpea] [Gt-a]