To Iokaste’s desire for clarification the Chorus responds in obscure language: “An unknown/ignorant apparition/seeming/opinion of words/speeches arrived.” The least ambiguous word is “arrived”—but to what arrival can the Chorus be referring? If δόκησις is taken to mean “suspicion,” the statement might refer to Oidipous’s incorrect inference that Teiresias’s words were dictated to him by Kreon. It is strange, however, to say that an error arrived. Whence did it come? Calling the dispute an “apparition” or “seeming” casts it as something unreal, and that it certainly was not. The emphasis on arrival in combination with a mystery revolving around words might, however, evoke the memory of Oidipous’s arrival in Thebes bringing a solution to the riddle posed by the Sphinx. If so, the characterization “ignorant” or “unknowing” seems to suggest that his solution was not based on knowledge but ignorance; he was certainly ignorant of the way in which it led to fulfillment of the prophecy he had just received from Delphi and also ignorant of the way in which the riddle was ideally suited to him. Since it was Delphi that gave Oidipous the impetus that ended in his arrival in Thebes, his ignorance pertains to this as well—to the way, perhaps, in which the prophecy was shaping his life, or else to the meaning of the prophetic words themselves. It was that prophecy, in a metaphorical sense adequate to the present phrase, that arrived in Thebes in the person of Oidipous. This can be taken one step further: Oidipous arrived as the embodiment of another prophecy as well: the one given Laios that he must die at his son’s hands. The “seeming” in δόκησις pertains in all these instances to the false appearance of success. Causes and effects, results, or consequences all seem to be shrouded in far greater mystery than mortals are capable of fully comprehending. [Mpei] [Mi]