When Oidipous says that the citizens’ pain “falls on each to bear alone / Right just for him,” it is clear that he has got it dreadfully wrong, for while he must mean to say that each person suffers only on his own behalf and in a manner and degree fitting him or her as an individual, the fact is that the plague is affecting the city as a whole. This suggests that the citizenry, in Athens as well as in Thebes, deserves what it is getting, which means for something it is doing as a collective. [Aj] What this may be in Thebes may not yet be clear to the audience, but in relation to Athens, it will suppose the plague to be a symptom of the gods’ judgment of the war. [Apaon]