Where Oidipous imagines that a sacrilegious conspiracy directed by Kreon will be washed away by its instigators’ tears of pain, the audience knows that the conspiracy does not exist and so can be no sacrilege; rather, Oidipous is himself the pollution named by the god, so if bitter tears are in fact to be shed, it will be by Oidipous. It is neither the prophet nor a mortal ally who “thought this whole thing up,” but the god. So where by “this whole thing” Oidipous means a non-existent plot, the audience will suppose the god’s meaning to be plague, incestuous marriage, Sphinx, and parricide. [Gd] Terming the presumed conspiracy against him a “sacrilege” Oidipous casts himself as an offended divinity. In so doing he vies with the actual gods; his words and attitudes challenge their power, and so he presents himself as a sacrilege that must be removed. His present words describe precisely what actually is taking place: Apollo is in the process of driving him out of Thebes, for he is himself the pollution, which he must shortly be made to discover to his own unending tears of pain. Supposing that Athens viewed as the work of a conspiracy and an act of sacrilege Delphi’s promise to Sparta of divine aid, the comparison with Oidipous suggests that Athens is itself home to impious attitudes that challenge the gods and that the gods must therefore punish and remove. [Gt-a] [Aj] [Apa] [Apcmu]