If the audience assumes that the god continues to speak through Iokaste, it will hear that “fair speech” points directly to the marvelous construction of his own ability to express himself via the speech of an unwitting mortal, but how much happiness does that mortal deserve for serving as the god’s vehicle? Virtue, it would seem, must lie in the capacity to recognize divine speech and then to take it seriously, for surely mortals cannot be expected to recognize when a god is speaking through an ordinary individual. By contrast, whenever Apollo speaks through his authorized representative at Delphi, every mortal can be expected to understand the communication’s importance and to respect it. [Gd] [Apcma] [P] [Mw]