φίλων includes a range of close supportive relationships from political associates to personal friends to extended family to parents, spouse, and children. Here Kreon might well mean any or all of these; he could have in mind relatives, personal friends, and political associates. And while he is almost certainly not thinking of Oidipous, the latter fits into nearly every one of these categories; he is Kreon’s administrative superior, friend, brother-in-law, and, though both are unaware of it, nephew. This conflation of relationships is suggestive of the impropriety and contamination implied when Oidipous earlier used the word φίλος to express his sense of closeness to Laios (l. 137), the father whom he has in fact killed and whose wife and position he has taken. Relationships, it would seem, are blurred and thus polluted by an excess of ties. One might explore the premise that political alliance, friendship, and family are best kept separate. [Mpea]