The audience’s previous critical examinations having yielded powerful new insights into the myth, it will apply itself to this aspect of the prophecy as well. [Gm] When Oidipous is told by the Pythia that he will be his father’s killer, the meaning seems unambiguous, but Oidipous reports that the prophecy offered him a specification of the father as the one who “planted the seed” (τοῦ φυτεύσαντος πατρός). “As opposed to what other father?” Oidipous might well have asked. Simply asking the question should generate the answer: “As opposed to the one who raised you!” In modern parlance, it would be nearly the same as if the Oracle had said, “It is required that you be the killer of your birth father.” The obvious inference is that Apollo knows of two fathers: one who impregnated Oidipous’s mother and another who raised him. If the god was at pains to make this distinction, as he clearly seems to have been, then in fact he was giving Oidipous the answer to his question, though by way of circumstances rather than a name: “You will know your birth father thus,” Oidipous is told: “he is the man you will kill.” Τo which a proper response might have been, “Must I kill him to know him?” Where Oidipous fails to recognize the range of meanings in the Pythia’s words, the audience can see that the god did present him with the opportunity for a very different interpretation and for a very different response. That Oidipous does not seem to recognize that the Pythia’s words might be interpreted in this way leaves the audience to observe a lack of intellectual flexibility and subtlety in the mind of a man acclaimed by all for his facility with riddles. To accept the fact that Oidipous had no choice but to kill his father and marry his mother is to think much like Oidipous, who is working on the assumption that the god is like the drunken Corinthian—intent only upon dishonoring him. Such thinking in fact dishonors the god, and that cannot be expected to end well for the mortals who dishonor him. [Mipd] [Mp] [P] [Mw]