Compassion for the innocent child seems a natural and endearing quality in the shepherd. His reasoning, however, that Corinth was far enough from Thebes to remove all danger was manifestly erroneous in precisely the same way as Laios’ calculation that his wife would not get pregnant or that the infant would not die and Oidipous’s calculation that Thebes was far enough from Corinth to prevent his killing his father and marrying his mother. While such calculations seem reasonable from the standpoint of probability, their failure reveals that the slightest possibility affords the gods an avenue by which they can involve themselves in mortal affairs. Since the danger that worried Oidipous, Laios, and the herdsman was never a matter of simple probability but of the gods and their power to realize prophecy, no distance was great enough to eliminate it. Once Laios and Iokaste have transgressed the god’s prohibition, they must contend with the god’s will, and their example shows the god’s will to be insuperable. In deciding whether or not to save the infant, the herdsman, like them, relied upon the proposition that the force of prophecy was not absolute. In saving the babe he made the same error as was made by Laios and Iokaste in ordering its death. Thus, Laios, Iokaste, the herdsman, and Oidipous are all joined in a similarly erroneous response to the same circumstances. Just as the prophecies mirror one another, so do the errors made in the attempt to defeat them and the reasoning from which those errors stem. Kithairon lies between Thebes and Corinth. There the herdsman calculated the probability of escaping prophecy by sending the baby boy to Corinth, there the infant was passed from one herdsman to the other, and here he met and killed his father. When he made his calculations he was in the area where the prophecy would be realized. Thus the god made a mockery of his calculations, thus the god made a mockery of all their calculations, and thus the god can be expected to make a mockery of all calculations of probability that a prophecy will not be realized. This applies to any calculations Athens may make in regard to the prophecy of a Spartan victory. [Mpea] [Apa]