In delivering the statement that, “I arrive in these parts where this ruler, as you say, was slain,” Oidipous exercises the utmost scrupulousness, as if, examining a witness in court, he prefers to allow the facts to speak for themselves. In so doing, however, he opens up the possibility that Iokaste’s understanding of the incident may contain inaccuracies. This is in notable contrast to his treatment of Teiresias’s revelations, to which he gave no serious consideration, and to the statement given by the sole survivor, in which he has seen no grounds for doubt. Cross-examination requires specificity, and Oidipous’s formulation places him at the scene of the crime, while his use of the present infinitive ὄλλυσθαι (“slay”) places his arrival at the crossroads in the same time frame as the killing. The fact that Oidipous is giving any consideration whatsoever to the proposition that he may have killed Laios marks a significant departure from his previous practice, which has been to ignore it. In the audience’s view, however, he should even during the wanderings of his mind prior to his appearance on stage have recalled the encounter at the crossroads, and so from the start of the investigation been alert to the possibility—however remote—that a man he once killed might have been Thebes’ king. Furthermore, in view of the shocking prophecy he had received at Delphi, at the moment he killed a man he should immediately have wondered if this might not be his father. That, too, has never yet occurred to him. So, as the audience now observes him allowing for the possibility that he killed Laios, it cannot help but remark how reticent he is to come to the obvious conclusions that it was he who killed Laios and further, given the complementary prophecies of which he has just been made aware, that Laios was his father. As hasty as he was in his departure from Delphi and as quick as he was to strike at the man riding in the cart, he is frustratingly slow to identify himself as the individual who brought pollution to Thebes. His cross-examination, then, like the legal technique upon which it is styled, is not aimed at the discovery of an insight, but rather at discrediting the witness, in this case: Laios’ widow, his own wife, and his mother. What he does not realize (but the audience does) is that the truths of which heis unaware dwarf the forensic strategy to which he is clinging. His practiced and even disciplined skepticism is now delaying the city’s healing. [Mpea] [Mpei] [Md] [Mg] [Mw]