To the audience it must be growing ever clearer that, Oidipous has then and now needed Apollo’s guidance as a crucial supplement to his own independent strength. He would have done better at every turn to seek the god’s guidance to negotiate the challenges that lay before him, beginning with his father’s killing. Oidipous is conspicuous, however, for having recoiled from just such guidance. The fact that he was at Delphi when he learned of the difficulties that lay ahead of him only underscores the opportunity he missed, because that was the very place to go for the kind of guidance that he needed. Any strength, guidance, and good fortune other than that offered by a god can be expected to do one as little good as the physical strength that slew Laios, the intellectual strength that defeated the Sphinx, and the “good fortune” that guided him to rule over Thebes and his mother’s bed. The exercise of the strength he once had in accord with self-guidance has left him without even ordinary strength or compass by which to navigate. This suggests that one should seek the god’s guidance not once one is ruined, but while one is still in the prime of one’s mental and physical strength. [Mip] [Mp] [Ap]