Oidipous tells how, like an outward-bound navigator with the sky for his compass, he used the stars to chart his position relative to his home town. Reference to the night sky implies travel in darkness; great indeed must have been the urgency of his flight, confirmed by the word “fled.” Since he was already at a safe distance from Corinth, his hasty departure and night travel suggest that he was fleeing the Oracle itself. The audience itself likely feeling “dishonored” (l. 789) may have been inclined to “flee” the Oracle. At the same time, the word τεκμαρούμενος, translated here as “[having] read [the stars],” by which Oidipous means “having taken my bearings” or “having calculated my position,” has the primary meaning: “to judge by signs and tokens,” which includes reading the flight of birds and dreams as messages from the gods. Oidipous can be heard to claim that he read a divine message, when in fact he was abandoning the site where he might receive such a message. Having just determined henceforth to navigate on his own, he read natural signs not as a divine message, but as a basis to orient himself in geographic space. The audience knows, however, that those stars, natural as they may be, will direct Oidipous towards the lethal meeting with Laios just mentioned by the prophecy received from the Pythia. So, by the time that he concludes this sentence by explaining his motive for flight to have been his determination never to see the unbearable prophecies come to pass, the audience will infer that one can no more avoid the realization of prophecy than one can regard natural signs as if they were independent of divine influence. [Dp] The audience will find misguided Oidipous’s decision to avoid realizating the terrible prophecy by taking matters into his own hands and relying rather on science. No matter how unbearable a prophecy may be, one cannot avert it by fleeing the place or the institution that issued it, nor can it be replaced, occluded, or neutralized by science. [Mp] [Apa]