When he realizes that he can in no degree hold himself responsible for Polybos’s demise, Oidipous lets out a cry that the audience must interpret for itself. He should be happy, for the thing he has most feared cannot come to pass. He has challenged the god and come out the victor, yet the apparently irrefutable evidence that the Oracle has proven to be a fraud seems to produce despair. He seems almost to have preferred that he eventually be made to kill Polybos. His distress comes at the realization that he will now to have to abandon the compass by which he has navigated his life’s journey: his faith in Delphi, for had he not given great weight to the prediction that he will kill his father, he would not have taken the path away from Corinth and towards Thebes. He may be upset, then, by the contradiction in which he believes himself to have been caught: his faith in the Oracle prompted him to challenge the god’s powers, but the proof of his success shows that the sacrifices he made were of no value, for had he returned to Corinth, he would not necessarily have killed his father. [Mpea] [Mi]