Reduced to monosyllabic gasps, then repeating the Chorus’s words, Oidipous appears now to be raving. “Disastrous” (δύστανος) echoes the Chorus (l. 1303), the herdsman (l. 1155), and Iokaste (ll. 1071 and 855), prompting the audience to consider in what sense, from whose perspective, and due to what cause he is to be regarded in this way. Is he an innocent victim (l. 855), a blind man plunging to his doom out of ignorance (l. 1155), doomed by his refusal to heed good advice (l. 1071), abandoned by the gods (l. 1303), or all of these combined: an innocent who cleaves to a destructive course that alienates him from the gods and so brings upon him—and his city–their curse? The audience should be able to answer each point: he is neither innocent nor a victim, for he deliberately set out to confound prophecy and the god who authorizes it; he is not ignorant, for the course of events was foretold; he does not fail to heed advice as long as it conforms to his own judgment; and it was not the god who abandoned him, but he who abandoned the god by taking flight from Delphi. These actions have made him a wretch. [P] [Mpei] [Mpea] [Mw] [Md]