The Chorus refuses to side against the man whose intellect enabled him to defeat a “winged maid,” the Sphinx, a more than human threat that proved Oidipous to be σοφός (“wise”)—a quality that the Chorus previously assigned to the bird augur (l. 483). These two predicates for the quality σοφός stand opposed just as the instances of bird augury to which they correspond stand opposed—Teiresias the divinely gifted bird augur is held up against Oidipous the uniquely gifted interpreter of the winged creature’s riddle. Again, however, while the audience may be hard pressed to find grounds to trust one more than the other, it knows Teiresias’ss speech to be consistently right, while Oidipous, despite his success with the Sphinx’s riddle, is now clearly at a disadvantage. This presents the audience with a conundrum, a paradox that can be expressed as a riddle. When is one man less wise than he seems and another wiser? When the former is a politician whose power derives from clever speech and the latter is a blind prophet with no temporal power whatsoever. [Apcma] [Mpei] [Md] [Mg]