In short order Kreon mentions blood kinship, the marriage relationship, the “awful [deeds],” and the alternative punishments of exile or death, but the references are hopelessly jumbled: Oidipous threatened Kreon with death, not exile, while the god called for the death or exile of Laios’ killer; Oidipous threatened Kreon after judging that he had committed a crime against him, while the god named the crime and established the penalties prior to the judgment of a guilty party; Kreon’s supposed plot to seize power by contriving to have Oidipous unjustly punished for Laios’ murder is not as terrible as Oidipous’s parricide and incest; mention of the ongoing marriage underscores the incest; and in this context emphasis on blood kinship pertains not only to Kreon and Iokaste but Oidipous and Iokaste, Oidipous and Kreon, and Oidipous and Laios. That Kreon’s complaint blurs the lines connecting and separating kinship, blood crimes, political crimes, punishments levied by a temporal ruler, and punishments levied by god suggests that Kreon is now in no position to make sense of any of this, and the fact that Iokaste is the one whom he turns to for help with it does not promise the discovery of a satisfactory solution. [Mpea] [Mpei]