Oidipous believes his own accession to rule in Thebes to be mere happenstance (κυρῶ), yet this view misapprehends the facts, for the audience knows that his accession to power was prepared by his own violent deed. Since that deed fulfilled two prophecies, it does not seem at all to have happened by chance. The god Apollo must have had a hand in it. What appears to Oidipous to have been a chance vacancy in the kingship at the time of his chance arrival in Thebes must have been the direct result both of his own action in killing Laios and Apollo’s action in preparing for that encounter. His present incomplete understanding is thus suggestive of a pattern of failure over the span of his adult life to appreciate the god’s role in arranging circumstances. [Mpei] [Ap]