The Chorus associates hybris with a series of actions: gratuitous consumption, scaling the heights, and a reckless dash to the very cliff edge of compulsion, all of which endanger both self and city by risking a precipitous fall. If the Chorus makes these observations in reference to Oidipous, then it reveals that it has begun to view him as a threat to his own and the city’s wellbeing. These faults are presented as a general truth, and this will prompt the audience to test them against its own ruler and city, to which excessive consumption and the ambition to rule supreme apply. How “a dash to the brink of compulsion / where even a good foot is of no use” applies to Athens is harder to see. Even in relation to Oidipous, ἀνάνγκαν is hard to construe; it usually means “constraint” or “necessity,” but it can also mean “punishment.” Having climbed the steep slope to consult the Delphic Oracle, Oidipous dashed down from the heights and onto the road where he encountered and killed his father, defeated the Sphinx, and then was married to his mother. His flight from prophecy, already on the audience’s mind as a sign of the hybris for which he would be punished (m. 545), seems to have propelled him over the precipice to his destruction. The way the Chorus finishes this sentence with mention of a “good (serviceable) foot” (ποδὶ χρησίμῳ) seems to make inverse reference to the swollen foot apparently referenced by Oidipous’s name; he should be expected to have problems with physical footings. In regard to metaphorical footings, it cannot be forgotten that his name can be interpreted to mean “Foot-in-the-Know;” it advertises the intelligence that enables him to defeat the Sphinx, save the city, and rise to the position of preeminence. It is the means by which hybris made him a tyrant. Oidipous’s confidence in the powers of his own mind and capacity for judgment seems also to have encouraged him in his mad decision to challenge the god of prophecy. To this the Chorus may be heard to comment, “on the heights he cannot make use even of his serviceable foot: his intelligence.” As the present investigation is disclosing, the knowledge and reason on which his unaided success depends are subject to limitations. First, reason works from information that may be erroneous, as when the sole survivor gives a false account of the attack on Laios and his traveling party. [Mpew] Second, reason proceeds on the basis of assumptions, and these can be false, as when Oidipous assumes Teiresias’s accusations to be motivated by ambition. [Mpea] If firm footing is essential to good government, a footing on swollen feet is clearly as problematic as reliance on an imperfect mind. Good government, then, depends upon a proper awareness of these limitations and a well-conceived approach to overcoming them. [Mg] Finally, the verb χρῆται which here must mean “uses” has as its primary meaning in the middle voice: “to consult a god or oracle” (LSJ). This meaning seems pregnant in connection with Oidipous, who with his bad feet and false assumptions did consult the Oracle at Delphi to confirm his parentage, but the consultation seems to have been of no use to him, for believing himself to have been insolently dismissed, he fled from what the god had to say. “Hybris,” as the Chorus seems to comment, “cannot consult even with a good foot.” Thus, Oidipous would have done better to approach the consultation with a humbler attitude, one that did not take offense at the god and fling him down the precipice but rather remained safely within the sanctuary at Delphi to accept the god’s communication. [Md] [Mip]