Kreon asks about something Laios did, although the only incident under discussion portrays Laios as a. victim. Oidipous has not said Laios did anything. That Kreon assumes that he is asking about something Laios did suggests that he knows of a deed that he is anxious for Oidipous not to know. The myth tells of three oracular consultations forbidding intercourse between Laios and Okaste. These the couple ignores and Okaste falls pregnant. After she gives birth, Laios orders the child’s ankles to be bound and for it to be taken into the wilderness and left to die. If Kreon knows any of this—and his sharp reaction to mention of Laios suggests he does, and if he believes the infant to have died, then he believes prophecy, even from the institutional oracle at Delphi, to be fallible. Such fallibility suggests the inadvisability of entrusting important decisions to information provided by a seer. The audience, however, knows not only that the infant did not die but also that it did eventually kill its father. The incident proves prophecy’s validity, power, and usefulness. [Mpei] [Mi] [Apcma] [Mg]