Oidipous now begins inquiring into the role played by the Corinthian stranger in his adoption. His interest in knowing whether he was bought, presumably in slave trade, or come upon by chance seems to indicate that he is now groping for his biological father’s identity. For the audience, however, his faltering progress appears unnecessarily clumsy, because the Oracle at Delphi has already foretold the means by which he is to know his birth parents; he was to kill his father and be united with his mother in marriage, and not an hour ago Teiresias crudely hinted that Oidipous will find he has already committed both these deeds (ll. 455-9). As it has by now all but definitively been established that Oidipous killed Laios, this connection ought to be at the forefront of his mind. It is amazing, then, and excruciating, that Oidipous does not at least try the fit of these facts. Again it underscores the contrast between a quick-witted Oidipous who might answer a riddle that stymied a city and a slow-witted Oidipous who misinterprets, fails to examine alternatives, and yet carries forward with exactitude the concept of a disciplined investigation. And again the audience will begin to understand that the extremes of Oidipous’s mind reflect imbalanced or crippled faculties of understanding and judgment. He is quick to dispatch a semi-divine creature (the Sphinx) but slow to submit to prophecy; quick to take charge of the town’s wellbeing but slow to recognize the god’s handiwork. [Mp]