Hearing in the word ἀσέπτων (“impious things”) an echo of the earlier phrase ούδὲ δαιμόνων ἕδη σέβων (ll. 885-6) prompts the audience to juxtapose the various offenses: parricide, incest, and the failure properly to reverence divine institutions. [Mj] [P] That all are described here in the same terms suggests that they are comparable. The equation of Athenian attitudes and policies towards the Oracle with Oedipus’s abhorrent misdeeds thus casts a lurid light upon the public discard of scruples in Athens, the rapid decay of Athenian attitudes towards prophecy, and the discontinuation of pious observance of every kind in the face of the plague, all instances of an impiety in which the Athenian audience was, according to Thucydides (2.53), fully engaged. [Gt-a] [P] [Mj]