Oidipous at this moment seems unusually appreciative and affectionate towards his wife, and while this tenderness is touching, it makes the incest all the more vivid and disturbing. What explains his sudden intimacy? Like her jubilation, it seems to be an expression of his inmost uncertainty. The feeling of intellectual and emotional kinship amplifies the biological; the incest is manifesting itself on several levels, to all of which the audience responds with abhorrence. As the love between Iokaste and Oidipous is sustained by an unwholesome mutual fear of prophecy and the concomitant desire they share to see it defeated, the audience may sense that any feelings of emotional intimacy that bind it to its leadership may also be based on attitudes toward prophecy that will prove similarly destructive. [Md] [P] [Mi] [Mw]