Kreon’s ability to classify Oidipous’s personality as a type must derive from a wide experience. Thus, Oidipous cannot be unique, and the generalization will prompt the Athenian audience to test Kreon’s science by thinking of examples from its own experience. This will bring to mind leaders in whom an excess of spiritedness arises whenever they are challenged, and especially when they are challenged by prophecy. It is not hard to imagine that a great many Athenians would have reacted in just this way to the news that the Oracle at Delphi had promised victory to Sparta and assured Sparta that the god would give unbidden assistance in achieving this end. Suggestions that the outbreak of plague in Athens was a manifestation of the god’s ire may be presumed to have provoked a spirited (but misguided) reaction in Athens akin to that displayed by Oidipous in response to Teiresias’s accusations in this play. [Gt-a] [Mg] [Md] [Mpea]