Having agreed to summon the witness, Iokaste invites her husband to reenter the house with her. As the house is the locus for their intimacies, it would seem that, despite the probability of Oidipous’s crime against Laios, they expect to preserve their marriage. Indeed, when she protests that she desires only to please he husband, she reminds the audience of their sexual intimacy. Saying in this context that she would not do anything that was not φίλον—“loving,” she underscores the fact that maternal and marital love should be expressed quite differently. What a mother owes her child is quite different than what she owes her spouse, and when the two are in conflict, as when sexual pleasure predicate the readiness to put a child to death, the child should come first. When the gods enjoin abstinence, they make both this point and the additional point that the gods’ advice is based on a love for mortals comparable to parents’ love for their children. [Md] [Ad]