Meaning to indicate that Teiresias’s words will not be tolerated (ἀνεκτά), Oidipous’s rhetorical question prompts the audience to answer, and it will find that in fact Teiresias’ss words will have to be tolerated because they are true. Oidipous is clearly working from a false assumption that what is intolerable cannot be true. [Mpea] Not only is his reasoning faulty, because this particular man is a seer, Apollo’s servant, it is arrogant and impious. [Md] [P] Here is another false assumption: what seers have to say has no special claim to credence. Finally, Oidipous’s error reveals another false assumption: the seer has no special relationship to the god for whom he claims to speak. To disbelieve the seer is to dismiss the possibility that select individuals serve the need for communication between gods and men. [P] [Dnc] [Dnp] To ignore an acknowledged medium for communication with the divinity is to dismiss the possibility of cooperation with the gods. This is the height of impiety. [P] One should therefore pay special heed to the words of precisely such a man as this even–or perhaps especially–when the message he deslivers seems intolerable, such as the report Athens received that Delphi had promised Sparta victory in the war. [Mi] [Gt-a]