Hearing her argument, Oidipous praises his wife’s powers of reason; he embraces her observation that one should not alter one’s actions in response to prophecy. Thus, any mental error she makes he also makes, any disrespect she shows the gods he is prepared to show the gods, and any censure due her is equally due him. To the audience, however, it is absolutely clear that both are making mental errors; not only are their views contradicted by the realization of prophecy to which they have been made instruments, a fact that they have not yet recognized, but their views are contradicted by their own actions; Oidipous literally gave his life a new direction in reaction to what he was told at Delphi, and on the same basis Iokaste acquiesced in the killing of her infant son. In both instances they believed that the prophecy need not come true if one acted decisively to counter it. The approach to prophecy they embrace here is contradicted by other actions as well, for when Laios and Iokaste received the prohibition on intercourse, they ignored it, and when when a child was born to them, they believed the prophecy enough to kill their child, but they reinterpreted the prophecy to mean: if a child issues forth from their union and lives to adulthood, then Laios must die at his hand. On the strength of their faith that a prophecy’s realization might depend upon the way in which it is interpreted, the couple decided to kill the baby. They consistently reserve to themselves the decision, how to interpret prophecy and how to respond to it. Clearly, though, events show this to be a disastrous approach to prophecy, for one cannot defeat prophecy by ignoring it, reinterpreting it, or counteracting it. [Mip]