Having just avowed his service to Loxias, Teiresias now begins to prophesy, to reveal the truth, and in so doing shows that he has reversed his earlier decision not to make all known. If the audience supposes that his initial stance may have been dictated by the god’s will, his present change suggests that that may not have been so, or perhaps that he has now been provoked to act against the god’s will, or that the god himself now sees fit for Oidipous to hear the truth. Teiresias attributes his changed decision to Oidipous’s denigration of his insight as “blindness.” Which of these makes most sense? When Oidipous charged him with conspiracy and telling lies for a fee, those accusations had no effect on his decision. What seems capable of provoking him, then, is the charge that his claim to insight is fraudulent. Where conspiracy and profiteering speak to the moral standing of the man, denying the seer his insight speaks to his standing with the god. This touches not only the man but also the god. In denigrating the prophet’s powers of insight, Oidipous casts doubt upon the god’s own powers and undermines the prestige of the god’s institutions, the means by which the god communicates with mortals. It is this that appears to exercise Teiresias—or even the god himself. It seems fitting, then, that Teiresias’s sudden willingness to reveal the truth reflects the importance that seer or god or both together give to respect for the prophet as a medium for communication between mortals and immortals, for it is this that is now under attack. One must infer that an attack on the institution of prophecy cannot be permitted to go unanswered. [P] [Aj] [Mi] [Apcma] [Dnp]