There are two ways to read this line. The papyri and medieval manuscripts have “It is not fate that I die at your hands.” Brunck corrects this to read “It is not fate that you die at my hands.” The correction makes sense as a response to Oidipous’s just having said that the blind seer cannot injure him. On Brunck’s suggested reading, Teiresias agrees with Oidipous’s observation that he will do him no harm, but he corrects the presumption that this is because he cannot see, for he claims to know Oidipous’s fate. The same conclusion has been reached by two different premisses, only one of which can be correct. Either the seer is rendered harmless by his blindness, or it allows him to see truths unseen by sighted mortals. To the audience, the accuracy of the seer’s knowledge is indisputable, which means that there are two types of sight—optical perception of the physical world in the present moment and divinely gifted insight into relationships of cause and effect across time reaching from the past, through the present, and into the future. [Mp] [Apcma]
But what of the reading offered by the manuscript tradition? If Teiresias actually said, “For it is not fate that I will fall at your hand,” he must be misconstruing what Oidipous said which he seems to take as a threat against him. The grammar of Oidipous’s statement (accusative and infinitive construction) does in fact allow for a reversal of subject and object. He might be understood to have said, “you are born of one long night, with the result that neither I nor anyone else who sees the light will harm [you].” (The pronoun ‘you’ does not occur in this sentence; it is implied by the verb.) Teiresias must know that that is not what Oidipous means, but by wilfully misconstruing he demonstrates the way in which double entendre works when one is listening for it. The seer appears to remind Oidipous that he has special status; he is under the god’s protection. From this relationship with Apollo follows his blindness and his incapacity to do harm to or be harmed by mortals; his life is the god’s to give, to direct, and eventually to take away. Teiresias’s willful twisting of Oidipous’s words to insert the idea of fate seems contrived to make another point as well; namely, that Oidipous has misconstrued similar statements about fate (μοῖρα), such as the one foretold him at Delphi; namely, that his father is fated to die at his hand. In this the audience might also hear an echo of the fate foretold Laios; namely, that he will die at the hands of his son. Of the two readings, that of the manuscripts and papyri is richer; to the short-sighted meanings of which Oidipous is aware it adds additional layers of complexity yielding insight into relations between mortals, gods, and the prophets who serve the needs of communication between them. [Mp] [Apcma] [Gd] [Da]