Mention of a “family member under curse” appears to confirm the suggestion just made (cf. m653) that the Chorus serves the god through the utterance of double entendre, for it seems to express hidden truths about Oidipous; he is the family member cursed by his own words earlier in the play (ll. 246 and 249) and it is he who seems to the audience to be being borne down under some sort of divine sanction against his parents dating to before his birth. [Gd] [Apcmu] [Gm] “Obscure speech” would then most likely reference the prophecies casting Oidipous as Laios’ killer. Indeed, prophets, Oracles, and even the sphinx are thought to couch their speech in riddles and obscure rhymes. In the present context, however, the speech of the Chorus itself carries unintended freight in the form of a riddle for the audience to solve. Is it the case, then, that prophetic speech always has the character of a riddle? The audience may consider both the best-known story of Oidipous’s consultation at Delphi, when he received the prophecy that he must kill his father and marry his mother. While that prophecy has never been seen as obscure, it is clearly the one that will, as the Chorus puts it here, eventually “throw blame upon you.” Yet this comment, too, seems prophetic—it reveals something new, for rather than blaming Oidipous for the “crimes” of parricide and incest, the Chorus seems to feel that he was made to suffer these terrible punishments by the injustices of fate or the gods. [Aj] The audience is aware of yet another prophecy that seems similarly both unjust and uncharacteristically unambiguous: the prophecy giving Sparta the victory over Athens. [Gt-a] The audience may construe the present utterance in two ways: either Oidipous will not convict himself of murder or he will indeed convict himself, but not by way of double entendre or prophetic obscurities but clear and indisputable evidence. This distinction is informative, for while Oidipous has from his first appearance on stage been either speaking or exposed to a string of double entendres convicting him of Laios’ killing and Thebes’ pollution, none of these has caught his attention. If he is to be made to realize what is happening, it will not be done with subtleties. Oidipous has shown himself to be insusceptible of any but the most brutal demonstrations. If the god is making an example of him, he is doing so because his own apparent brutality is not of his choosing; it is a necessity imposed upon him by Oidipous’s insensitivity to anything less. [Dn] The same can be said of Athens: confronted by a prophecy of the city’s defeat, the city not only persists in its course but steels itself against any inclination to change its policy in this regard. Athens gives the gods no choice but to make a brutal example of the city’s deafness and instransigence. [Aj] [Apao]