Someone new arrives on the scene as if in instant answer to Iokaste’s prayer to Apollo for “conspicuous redemption.” Since this person does not know the royal palace, he cannot be the herdsman whose arrival is awaited. The audience’s possible disappointment at his not being the herdsman is offset, however, by a comic aspect in the way the new character presents himself, for when he says he would like to learn the whereabouts of Oidipous’s house (μάθοιμ´ ὅπου / τὰ τοῦ τυράννου δώματ᾽ ἐστίν Οἰδίπου) he creates a rhyme that makes Oidipous’s name resonate with “whereabouts,” and so he seems to say: I would like to learn the whereabouts of “I-Know-Where.” This sounds silly, but the audience will see that there is a meaningful contrast between his overladen way of asking a simple question and Oidipous’s extraordinarily persistent efforts to get to discover the whereabouts of Laios’ killer. He should also already know, as Teiresias suggested (414), where he is living (at his birthplace) and with whom he is living (his mother), for if prophecy informs him that he must marry his mother, and he marries, then he should suppose that he might have married his mother. By the same logic, if he was told that he must kill his father and he kills a man, he should suppose the man he killed to be his father. If he knew that he had married his mother, he could also know that he had killed Laios, and so he would, as his own name advertises, know the whereabouts of Laios’ killer. That he knows none of these things only underscores his failure ever to consider the possibility that the prophecies in terror of which he lived were being fulfilled. Thus, the simple question put by the just-arrived character is not at all innocent; it touches directly upon the horrifically contradictory behavior exhibited by Iokaste, Laios, and Oidipous. Its silliness begins to sound terribly ominous, suggesting that the god is employing yet another mortal voice to poke at the truth. Thus, if the new arrival represents the answer to Iokaste’s prayer, it will certainly not be the answer she wants. [Gd] [Mpei] [P] [Mpei] [Mi] [Apcmu] [Aj]