Oidipous’s use of the word συμφορά here to characterize the deed for which the god is demanding an act of religious purification (καθαρμός) might well trouble the audience, for συμφορά suggests that that deed might be nothing more than a chance occurrence, an incident—not necessarily a crime. [Dc] Jean-Pierre Vernant observes that the fifth-century Athenian audience was subject to new conceptions of crime and responsibility; Athens was in the throes of working out a new “intellectualist” terminology for action and thus for crime. “With the advent of law and the institution of city courts, the ancient religious conception of the misdeed fades away. The role of the individual becomes more clearly defined. Intention now appears as a constitutive element of the criminal action, especially in the case of homicide.” According to an older “pre-legal” mode of thinking, a “misdeed, hamartema, is seen at the same time as a ‘mistake’ made by the mind, as a religious defilement.” In this view, the criminal is taken over by madness, an error as much of ignorance or blindness as anything else. This madness “penetrates him like an evil religious force. But even while it becomes identified with him, it at the same time remains separate, beyond him. The defilement of crime is contiguous and attaches itself, over and beyond the individual to his whole lineage, the whole circle of his relatives. It may affect an entire town, pollute a whole territory.” It is unclear, however, to which of these two conceptions of justice Oidipous adheres. If he takes the contemporary “intellectualist” position, for which intention is the key to assigning fault, an accident would not be punishable, and there would in fact be no need to involve the god. If he takes the traditional pre-legal position, a καθαρμός would be the appropriate way to treat the wrongdoer’s madness or blindness, but the deed that resulted from it would not then be regarded as an accident. If the matter is referred to Delphi, accident has nothing to do with it. If the matter is judged in terms of accident and intention, then the matter should be handled in the courts, not through rites of purification. To refer a matter to Delphi, then, is to have decided that it entails pollution. [Mip] To refer an action to the courts, on the other hand, is to have decided that it was intended. The problem here is that while Oidipous has referred the matter to Delphi and his incest and parricide were not intended (he does not even know he committed them), his language aligns him with the rationalist position. His question does not permit of a reasonable answer; it puts the god in an untenable position. If the god refers to μίασμα and demands a purificiation, he is complaining of a transgression against himself: his will or his customary entitlements. For Oidipous to characterize as neutral an event that seems sufficiently to have angered the god to induce him to visit a plague upon the city is directly to contradict the god’s view of the matter. [Ad] [Aj] This itself amounts to an affront that itself clearly cannot be characterized as an accident. It is precisely the kind of act that results in pollution and requires purification. In this sense Oidipous is, in his present use of language, committing the type of error that could have provoked the god in the first place. [Mpe] Furthermore, the audience may well recall the priest’s problematic use of the same word at line 44, where it could be taken to mean “trespasses.” Oidipous’s present use of the word συμφορά is itself a trespass and suggests a connection between the incest and parricide and his conflation of crimes with accidents. That Oidipous has just departed from Delphi when he kills his father and then marries his mother suggests the possibility that he may then have made the same error that he is making now: he may have misinterpreted something the god said—he may have characterized as an accident what was in fact an offense against the god. But what should he have done? If he was inclined to look at the world rationally, perhaps he should not have visited Delphi then or now. But if he visits Delphi, is this not an acknowledgement of the possibility of pollution through ignorance? In that case, the parricide and incest would have been neither accidents nor expressions of divine wilfullness, but just responses to an expression of impiety. What, however, could that have been? [P] The myth informs of no other incidents.