The stranger responds to the exhortation to “be the signifier” with a conditional clause: “if I must say this first,” which means that there was something that he would otherwise have put first: presumably that Oidipous is to be made king of Corinth, which is what he first said to Iokaste. Yet in a context in which he has just been enjoined to be the god’s medium and in which the audience has just understood him to say, or rather the god to say through him, that he has come to announce that Polybos is not Oidipous’s father, the audience will examine his present words for signs of divine speech carrying a message of significance to the god and to the message’s recipients, for Iokaste has already told Oidipous what the stranger has to say about Polybos. The audience will hear, then, in addition to the expected confirmation that Polybos is “dead and gone” (θανάσιμον βεβηκότα) this: “Know, then, that the deadly one has come.” “Deadly” is in fact the most common meaning of θανάσιμος. The verb also contributes to the ambiguity: βεβηκότα means “has passed on foot.” Kamerbeek finds it to be a euphemism (equivalent to “passed away”) appropriate to the Corinthian’s style, but it can just as well refer to motion towards the speaker. Finally, there is the demonstrative pronoun ἐκεῖνον. If we take “deadly” to refer to the god as author of the town’s plague and presumed arbiter of life and death for mortals and read the verb as “has come,” then the pronoun is suggestive—it points to the one who has been behind the scenes and announces that he, deliverer of death through plague, has now arrived on the scene. He is present. [Gd] [Apcmu] [Apa] [D]