Oidipous’s mention of “fate” (τύχης) seems to point up Apollo’s hand in arranging the suffering that he now faces. Clearly the god has gone to great lengths, taking many steps to advance his project this far, and despite all of the audience’s insight into the god’s power to speak and act through human agents and despite its recognition of the additional difficulty created for the god by Oidipous’s refusal to consider the possibility of his own culpability, it will still find it difficult to fault Oidipous for trying to avoid the terrible fate in store for him. [Md] [Apa] [Mw]