The ship from whose decks Iokaste imagines her husband being swept is a common enough metaphor for the state (previously in this play at ll. 23-4, 56, 101, and 696-7). Through it Iokaste identifies herself with the citizenry as it watches its leader being swept away, leaving the state to founder without leadership. The audience understands however that it is not a stormy sea, but Apollo, who is behind the leader’s removal, made necessary by his resisting those prophecies whose content he finds intolerable. Seeing or fearing that its own leader be swept from his post (Pericles died of plague in 429 BCE), the citizenry can anticipate the sinking of its own ship. [Aj] [Mpea] [Mg] [Mw]