When Oidipous boasts further that his answer to the riddle was a dead hit which he did not learn “from birds,” he means that he did not learn his answer from natural signs, as does a seer. How, then, did Oidipous learn the correct answer? The audience has begun to perceive that the god may have orchestrated events, the speech (or silence) of seer and Oracle, and may even presently be directing Oidipous’s own speech. [Gd] [Apcmu] Did, then, Oidipous’s answer to the riddle not originate in his mind independently of the god? While Oidipous has just called the sphinx a “dog,” his mention of “birds” reminds the audience that the Sphinx herself is not only dog but also bird, and so the audience might find itself trying to unriddle the present statement by reversing it: Oidipous must have learned the answer to the riddle from the “bird” who posed it, for the riddle was designed to be solved by a person who sees even in supernatural signs nothing beyond nature. Thus, the audience can reinterpret Oidipous’s self-congratulation as a reader of natural causes and natural effects as a comment both upon his incapacity or even refusal to see beyond the world of nature and upon the intimacy with which the god knows his mind and the subtlety of the god’s means to direct his actions. [Apaos] [Md] [Mpea] [Mpe]