Yet here Oidipous is said by the priest to have set life itself “upright.” Who has such power, if not a god? And who better to confirm the special regard in which Oidipous is held than a priest? In the priest’s regard for Oidipous as a man with capabilities exceeding those of other men and not less than those of a god, he diminishes the distance between the two. When a mortal is thought capable of combating plague, the distinction between man and god vanishes altogether. Indeed, Thucydides relates that those who contracted the disease and survived thought that this demonstrated that they would never die of any disease. [Mp] The priest sees a connection between the Sphinx and the plague because both seem to him to demand super-human solutions. But the audience may be cautioned by the difference it finds between the two crises: as the priest’s own language has just made clear, the Sphinx’s riddle appears in retrospect to have demanded nothing more than common knowledge of the human condition, while a treatment for Thebes’ blight on animal, plant, and human reproduction seems (like the plague in Athens) to be beyond the ken even of the most gifted of problem-solvers. So, if the audience makes a distinction between Sphinx and plague it must consider distancing itself from the error made by the priest and his followers. Is it wise, then, to join the priest and suppliants in hoping that Oidipous can perform the miracle of ridding Thebes of plague? Embracing him as a possible deliverer from the city’s plague, does one not run the risk of offending the gods and so alienating the healing powers they may have at their disposal? [Ap] And yet, if the gods do not manifest themselves in the space opened for them by supplication, would one not still do better to put one’s faith in the best available human intelligence? [Mp] Such is the conundrum that continues to confront the audience. The audience’s resolution of this dilemma in favor of either course of action depends entirely upon its assessment of the probability of success in either instance. On the one hand, there is the difficulty of treating the plague. On the other hand, there is the doubt that a god will respond when called through an act of formal supplication. Assuming that Thucydides is making an accurate report when he states that the people of Athens had given up faith that their gods would cure the plague (2.47.4), we might conclude that the play’s audience would, even if it recognized both its own incapacity to cure plague and the impiety of its skepticism towards the gods, still find no reasonable way to entrust the city entirely to the gods’ care, a step it could take by submitting to Delphi for instruction, what specific steps to take. Given the point realized above that plague and war may require a single solution, and given Athenian confidence, and certainly preference, that it determine the war’s outcome on its own, Athens would hesitate to put itself in the gods’ hands to find a cure for plague. [Mip] Nevertheless, while the Athenian audience may have reasons not to put its faith in Delphi to respond to a crisis such as the plague presently bedeviling Athens, it knows that, with respect Thebes, the plague appears to be an act of divine justice. Thus, even as the audience is aware of its own religious skepticism, the myth presents it with the necessity of considering the plague in Thebes, and thus also the plague in Athens, as divine responses to human action. [P]