The word χρῄζεις (translated here as “require”) again (as previously at ll. 365 and 422) resounds with the meaning deliver an oracle: “Do you know,” he might be heard to ask, “what prophecies you utter?” [Gd] Given both the implications of the Chorus’s request and the fact that neither Oidipous nor the audience believes that the Chorus recognizes them, the Chorus seems to be serving as a mouthpiece for the god. [Apcmu] This is not, however, what Oidipous means by his question, which is: “Do you realize that you are asking me to take Teiresias’s charges seriously,” for to allow that Kreon might be sincere in professing his ignorance is to grant that Teiresias may not be in Kreon’s service, and since this was the only reasonable explanation for the seer’s charges, it means that he must be prepared to give them serious consideration. Oidipous must realize that by yielding to Kreon’s oath, he obliges himself to accept responsibility for Laios’ death, if not to give serious consideration to the possibility that he did in fact kill Laios. That he poses this question suggests, however, that he is not sure that the Chorus is aware of these consequences. In his view the Chorus may have no further thought than for him to stop threatening Kreon. He supposes, then, that in appealing to him to honor Kreon’s oath, the Chorus does not exhort him to honor the gods themselves, but rather only to honor the use of the gods’ name as a mechanism for the regulation of civic strife—a mechanism the necessity of which Iokaste seems already to have embraced. [P] [Mg] If this is what the Chorus means, the public, though free of guilt for crimes such as he has committed, is just as impious as Oidipous has been until now. His dawning realization that oath-taking must be more than an arbitrary mechanism now elevates his view above that of the townspeople. [Mp]