In calling herself “suppliant” (ἱκέτις) Iokaste both calls again to the audience’s mind the suppliants at the play’s opening and suggests that she may herself require cleansing, for in Homer a ἱκέτις seeks purification for a wrongful death, and Iokaste is of course connected with two wrongful deaths: Oidipous’s killing of Laios and the attempted killing of her infant son. In neither of these incidents, however, does she bloody her own hands. This may prompt the audience to think of another citizenry that, like the Thebans at the play’s opening, has very recently tried supplication as a response to plague. Unlike Thebes, Athens has eschewed consultation as a means to resolve armed conflict. Athens may therefore be considered to have preferred killing to consultation and so indeed to need expiation for murder. As the Athenian audience registers its shock at Iokaste’s about face with regard to Apollo, it may glimpse itself and understand that, if it contemplates supplicating Apollo, it would, like Iokaste, petition the god to mitigate a project that its own disregard for him has compelled him to realize. Recognizing that its own words and deeds are as horribly conflicted as Iokaste’s, Athens might register the same shock at itself as it just registered for her. [P] [Apa] [Mpea]