Affirmation that Polybos died of sickness and old age underscores the contrast with Laios’ violent death. If Oidipous believes that the Oracle might have the capacity to foretell the future as his decision never to return to Corinth certainly suggests, then the distance between him and Polybos at the time of the latter’s death should prove to him that Polybos cannot be his father. If prophecy is valid (as Oidipous has always feared it might be), Polybos’ death should lay utterly to rest the paternity issue that prompted Oidipous’s visit to Delphi in the first place; this man cannot have been his father. But this means that Oidipous has based the most important decision of his life on an error, a contradiction of his own making, for he has been guiding his steps in direct response to the words of the Pythia while at the same time acting as if he knew all along the answer to the question about his paternity. He granted his consultation with Delphi an extremely high degree of significance, and yet he did not take the information it gave him consequentially. [Md] [Mpea]