Accusing Kreon’s deed of “crawling forth with a clever stratagem” (δόλῳ προσέρπον) Oidipous seems to cite the reference in the Sphinx’s riddle to a creature that sometimes crawls on all fours. Speaking through double entendre, the god characterizes Oidipous’s encounter with the Sphinx as a cunning plan. The god appears to be making it explicit that the Sphinx and its riddle were in fact, as the audience may already have begun to surmise, a very subtly conceived and executed divine action of which Oidipous was utterly ignorant. [Gd] [Apcmu] [Apaos] [Mpei]