Having recognized that her encouragement and advice are having no effect on Oidipous, Iokaste thinks to approach Apollo for help. Yet the audience might recall that her encouragement and advice consisted of the argument that one can ignore prophecy, the avenue by which the gods offer their help. Not only does she thereby contradict her own advice, by seeking to close down the available media for verbal exchange she has left compulsion as the gods’ only avenue for communication with mortals. Her failure to persuade Oidipous may thus itself be attributable both to herself for the bad advice she has been wont to deliver and to Apollo’s long-term project, which is just now beginning to show fruit despite the vigorous resistance put up by father, mother, and child, dating all the way back to the time when Laios and Iokaste ignored the warnings delivered by prophecy that they must not have a child, then, having given birth to the child, when they determined upon a course of action that required the gods, or rather Apollo, to intervene by saving the child and contriving for the child to kill Laios, and now when the god has had to overcome Iokaste’s counsel to Oidipous to ignore prophecy. It is terribly ironic, and even pathetic, that she should now come for the help of that very god whom she has seen only as malevolent and whom she has resisted with all her might. [Mpea] [Mpew] [Apa] [P]