As Teiresias makes ready his departure Oidipous comments that his presence is irksome because he is getting in the way (ἐμποδών). This is the same adverb used by Oidipous to inquire what had gotten in the way of an investigation into Laios’s death (l. 128), to which he received the answer that it was the sphinx. Oidipous’s present view that the seer is blocking the investigation is thus made to parallel the town’s view (expressed by Kreon) that the sphinx blocked the investigation that should have occurred immediately following the king’s murder. For the audience, however, it is not Teiresias who is blocking the investigation, even if he has not in fact disclosed all that he knows. The audience has been exploring the idea that Oidipous’s talents stand in the way of his access to the truth; he loses patience with the god’s servants whenever their speech challenges his own values or beliefs. His dismissal of the seer now repeats a pattern stretching back into the past, possibly as far as the fateful consultation at Delphi, when he was given the unbearable news that he must kill his father and marry his mother, to which he responded by changing—to no avail—the course of his life. Finally, the root of the Greek ἐμποδών is pod (“foot”), to which the syllable pous in Oidipous also pertains. The impediment lies with him as an aspect of his name, his character, his history, his being. As such he does not see it and consequently does not see his own role in the chain of causation that has brought him to the present moment. The audience, on the other hand, can see not only that blaming Teiresias is utterly contrary to the facts of the matter, but that in precisely this kind of dismissal, this deafness to the help a seer might offer, lies a significant impediment. [Gd] [Mpea] [Md] [Mi]