When she laments her husband as “ill-fated” (δύσποτμ᾽), Iokaste is full of sympathy and compassion, but she is also utterly wrong, for what has become clear to the audience is that his anguish is rooted not in fate as an expression of the gods’ arbitrariness but in ill-considered action, in the mishandling of crucial decisions, and in the false assumptions to which these errors can be traced. [Mpea] [Md] [Mw] In particular, Oidipous has misjudged the relationship of the Pythia and the god Apollo to mortals in regard to their relative powers, their dispositions, and the necessity that binds them together for communication and cooperation. [Mp] [Ap] [Md] [Ad] [Dnp] [Dnc] Thus, as she expresses the wish that he might never (μήποτε) know who he is, he and the audience have been led to the opposite conclusion; that he should long since (πάλαι in the previous line) have pursued to its conclusion the question of his identity. The ideal moment for that pursuit was before killing his father and marrying his mother—the moment at which he entered the sacred space at Delphi and read the inscription that enjoins every consulter to know oneself. Indeed, the inscription suggests that every issue for which one seeks the god’s aid is at bottom based on the problem of limited self-knowledge. [Mpei] [Mi]