Oidipous considers precisely the problem that the audience would anticipate: a period of inaction will benefit his adversary, whose “plans will be effected” while “mine will have fallen short.” To this objection the audience has, however, already formulated a reply: the god’s plans are already effected while Oidipous’s have already fallen short. That he can refer to the past as if it still lay in the future is a sign of his inadequacy; it points up the profound difference between his relationship to time and that of the god. Apollo’s plan has been decades in the works, all that while entirely escaping Oidipous’s notice. Oidipous’s sense of haste is made ridiculous by the length of the god’s view, the decades, even generations of time within which the god has been at work. The fact that Apollo is effecting a plan in the mortal domain demonstrates the fact that divine and mortal domains do intersect, but their differing perceptions of time (and space?) suggest that, despite the intersection, their modes of action are necessarily very different. [Mp] [Apa] [Dp]