In requesting that Oidipous “teach” her what has so angered him, Iokaste calls the gods to witness. Her invocation may in other circumstances have no more weight than any other intensifier, but when the core myth points to the gods as agents in the revelation of Oidipous’s crimes, when the audience is developing a sense that Apollo is taking a direct and immediate interest in the action on stage, and when the expected revelation is thought to be imminent, Iokaste’s request for instruction in the sight of the gods has a portentous ring, as if calling upon them now to witness the revelation of his (and her) crimes to all mortals, including (καί) him and her. Indeed, her verbal flourish may well suggest to the audience that the god has held back the revelation until she was present, and now she is heard to declare herself present and ready to receive instruction. Where the word “instruct” (διδάξον) suggests that there is something to be taught and learned, the audience (echoed by audiences and readers across the history of this play’s reception) in fact desires an answer to the question: What should one take away from this terribly conflicted situation in which a man willing to sacrifice his own wellbeing for that of his fellow citizens has so offended the gods that he is made to kill his father and marry his mother? In being made to speak double entendre (as she appears to be doing here), Iokaste seems to share her husband’s fate (the incest and its public disclosure), to share responsibility for the city’s pollution, and to share in being made by the god a party to her own undoing. [Gd] [P] [Md] [Ad] [Aj]