“What then had I need to see?” appears to answer with a rhetorical question the Chorus’s genuine question, “How did you dare thus to extinguish your sight?” Oidipous’s rhetorical question implies that, given his prospects, he had no use for his eyes, but couching this explanation as a question will prompt the audience to consider whether there was nothing that he may still have been required to see. One thing of which the audience is already quite keenly aware that he should see is that the god may not be acting capriciously and maliciously (as he thinks), but rationally and justly. [Ad] [Aj] [Ap] This he must see, although it is true that his eyes would not be of any use in doing so. The truth that he has blindly struck upon, then, is that the body, its sense organs, and the mind are of no use if one uses them without the basis of a proper understanding of their limitations and the need this creates for reliable guidance from a more insightful source. [Mpei] The gods provide the only avenue to such insight and must be trusted to provide it. [Mi] That Oidipous’s rhetorical question is expressed in the imperfect tense suggests further that the audience consider not only what he should see now, but also what he ought to have seen in the past. Should he not have inferred that the man he met at the crossroads could be his father and the woman he subsequently married could be his mother? Had he trusted that the Oracle’s prophecy would inevitably come to pass he certainly might have anticipated these relationships; any older man he killed might prove to be his father and any older woman he married might prove to be his mother. Should he not have seen that in relation to his father, the prophecy was really a command and not a prediction, while in relation to his mother, it may have been a promise of reunion and not a threat of incest? Had he recognized that he was hearing an expression of the god’s will and had he respected the fact that he was obliged to accommodate himself to that will, he might have discovered these interpretations of the god’s words. Indeed, had he submitted himself to the god’s will instead of deciding to outrun it, he would have remained in dialogue with the Pythia until she had clarified the god’s instructions to him. This, then, is what he ought to have seen when he had his eyesight. [Dnc] [Dnp] [Mpea] [Mipd]