That Oidipous sees a black cloud suggests that his self-inflicted blindness is not, as the audience may just have supposed, affording him any new sightedbess; he sees nothing. The imagery of a dark storm cloud does, however, recapitulate several ealier metaphors for Oidipous’s captaincy of state in the midst of crippling storms (ll. 56, 101, and 696). Then he was thought to have a firm enough grip on the helm to enable him to bring passengers, crew, and cargo to safety; now it seems that Oidipous views his own life as a ship blown acrpss the water without an effective rudder. [Mg] [Mpea] Thus where he stood before as pilot to an immense ship, now he views himself is a tiny vessel adrift without a hand to guide it. He has been transformed from the city’s salvation to one who is himself desperately in need of salvation. The city of Athens is in the midst of such a transformation; once the salvation of all Greece, Athens is now menaced by many of those it once protected. Viewed in relation to Oidipous’s perception of a dark storm carried by an ill wind, the Athenian audience would have to question any propensity in Athens to explain the storm of recent misfortunes in terms of an ill wind, for Oidipous has not simply been allowing himself to be blown about, driven by any ill wind that blows up; rather, it is precisely the course of action upon which he resolved that blew him straight to the crossroads where he met and killed his father and thence to his mother’s bed. The problem was that, warned of a tidal wave rolling towards him, Oidipous attempted to navigate his small craft to safety. He meant to serve as his own helmsman and to navigate by the stars just as a short time later he would agree to serve as helmsman to the ship of state. In both endeavors he would seem for a time to succeed only to discover that by taking matters into his own hands he has doomed both enterprises. The problem, then, was neither chance nor a malevolent god. The god endeavored to warn and stood ready to instruct, but Oidipous responded with a commitment to action directed solely by his own intellect. His failure, then, reveals not that it is man’s fate to fall short, but rather that he can reasonably be expected to fail when he sets his own capacities above those of his gods. [Mp] [Ap] [Ad] [Md]