To the rhetorical question he asks, Oidipous believes the answer to be: no man could be more hated by the gods. In fact this answer is only partly correct, for Oidipous does not yet know the full extent of what the gods have in store for him. He has come only to the limited conclusion that he killed Laios. As his strange words in the previous lines make clear, he now sees a relationship between the man he killed and Laios, while the fact is that they are not related—they are one and the same. What he does not yet know is that he and Laios ae closely related, and when he discovers this, he will believe himself to be even more hated by the gods than he is now. He should, however, already have inferred that he and Laios are father and son: he was told that he would kill his father and he now knows that Laios was told that he would be killed by his son. He knows that he killed Laios and that Laios was killed by him. It is extremely unlikely that two such prophecies be given separately to two individuals regarding their respective roles in a future killing. It is even more unlikely that a killing occur involving these two individuals in precisely the roles assigned them by prophecy. But these two extremely unlikely conditions having been met, it seems even more unlikely at this point that the prophecies then be wrong on the remaining point: murderer and murdered are son and father. To be repeatedly taken by surprise by the accuracy of prophecy shows Oidipous to be unreasonably resistant to granting it any validity at all. His extreme skepticism is opposed, however, by his worry that he kill his father and marry his mother in accordance with prophecy. His views towards prophecy are inconsistent. In again considering the question, why the gods seem to despise Oidipous, the audience now has a possible answer: because his attitudes towards the gods and prophecy are inconsistent. The inconsistency bespeaks a profound ambivalence towards the role of gods in his life. He grudgingly accepts their help when he must, but otherwise wishes them to leave him to manage affairs for himself. When they seem to stand in his way, he seeks a way to circumvent them. [P] [Md] [Mpea]