Oidipous’s account of the part of the prophecy pertaining to his father diverges even more sharply from the first telling (l. 793); where he previously said that he was to be murderer (φονεὺς) of the father who sired him, he now informs the Corinthian stranger that the god told him, “I had to . . . draw my father’s blood with my own hands.” The discrepancy alerts the audience to the fact that it is dealing with interpretations, not quotes; if it wishes to know what the god actually may have said, it will have to reconstruct it. the infinitive ἑλεῖν (“to draw”) is governed, like μιγῆναι preceding it in the same sentence, by χρῆναι (“to be necessary”). Did Apollo say, “it is necessary”? This is the same governing verb as in the first telling, but there it was in the optative form: χρείη (l. 791). Both the optative and infinitive can indicate indirect discourse. In either case, the form used by the god in direct discourse can be presumed to have been χρή—”it is necessary.” Both versions point back, then, to the same word in the same form; they represent two ways of ssaying the same thing. The god was not, then, predicting or foretelling an event, namely, that Oidipous will kill his father and have intercourse with his mother. He appears rather to have been acribing responsibility to necessity. He was informing Oidipous of two actions in which he must participate. If the necessity stems from Apollo, then he is giving Oidipous orders, just as when in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers he instructs Orestes to avenge his father by killing his mother. Alternatively, the necessity to which the god refers may be something apart from him, a constraint to which he knows Oidipous to be subject. That he is telling Oidipous about it in advance suggests that he is preparing him to deal with it. [Ad] [Apcma] If the former, he is requiring a service of Oidipous; he is enlisting Oidipous as his agent in the completion of a project dear to the god. [Apama] The audience knows what this project might be, for Laios’ and Iokaste’s disregard for the prophetically transmitted prohibition on intercourse between them makes it necessary for their child, Oidipous, to kill Laios, for otherwise Apollo’s threat to make this happen will prove to have been meaningless, and the god’s word will lose all credibility, without which he and mortals will lose the basis for communication and cooperation with one another—the relationship that makes Apollo their god, the loss of which the Chorus is also concerned (ll. 906-10). The audience understands, then, that the necessity of which Apollo speaks stems from Apollo and is also separate from him. Either way one takes “necessity,” one can see that both the god hmself and something outside the god require Oidipous’s participation in Laios’ killing. Apollo is both informing Oidipous–allowing him to share in the knowledge that the killing must be performed and by him and enjoining him to act as he instructs. The account Oidipous gives now of the prophecy he received meshes well with the prophecies given to Laios. Where Laios was told to abstain from intercourse from his wife, or else by killed “by the hand” (πρὸς παιδὸς; l. 713)) of the child they conceived, Oidipous reports being told that he must take his vather’s life with his “very own hands” (χερσὶ ταῖς ἐμαῖς). From this detail one will infer that Laios’ killing would not have been a murder but the fulfillment of a threat and an execution of justice. The fact that the word “murderer” (φονεὺς) is omitted from the present account suggests that it may not have been spoken by the god; it is Oidipous’s interpretation of “to draw blood,” an action that, when performed at the behest of a god, suggests blood sacrifice. (We might think of God instructing Abraham to draw his son’s blood.) This association would prompt the audience to consider whether the god may in fact have been ordering Oidipous to make a sacrifice of his father. One might now look for other signs in Oidipous’s earlier narrative that he was misinterpreting the god’s words, and one might notice that that narrative pairs φονεὺς, as sentence’s predicate nominative with the verb “to be” in the future optative: ἐσοίμην. The optative mood without the particles εἰ or ἄν can signal reported speech, while the future tense seems to indicate a prediction, which is how Oidipous and the audience have understood it: Oidipous’s report of the oracle’s prediction of a future event. But the optative may also be used for purposes other than reporting speech. One of these is the “ethical” optative used to indicate an obligation. The Pythia might have used the optative mood to inform Oidipous that he was obliged to be his father’s killer. If so, the priestess (or the god for whom she speaks) did not use the future indicative, which was converted to the future optative when the Pythia transmitted it to Oidipous, but the future optative, which then would have undergone no further change when transmitted by either the Pythia or Oidipous. So, since Oidipous could not be sure whether the words he was receiving were in direct or indirect discourse, he might well have misconstrued them as a prediction when they were meant to convey an ethical obligation. When it first heard Oidipous giving Iokaste the details of his visit to the Oracle, the audience, encouraged by the mythic expectation that Oidipous was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother, would likely have similarly misinterpreted the optative as a sign of indirect discourse for a future-tense statement. From the perspective afforded it by the variation in Oidipous’s recounting of the prophecy, however, the audience can now see that the god may have been communicating a rather different message than the one Oidipous understood. In this case, rather than the god dismissing Oidipous without giving him the answer for which he had come to Delphi, it was Oidipous’s misinterpretation of the ambiguity in the god’s speech that prompted him to terminate the consultation summarily. When he left Delphi, then, determined not to kill his father, he left the god no alternative but to employ him as an unwilling agent in Laios’ death. [Dn] [Apamu] By declining to serve the god by conducting a holy sacrifice on his behalf, Oidipous created a new necessity; he himself would have to be made to suffer correction. [Aj] Having misunderstood the prophecy as a prediction that he become his father’s murderer, he made it necessary that he murder his father. The same applies to his understanding of the part of the prophecy bearing on his relations with his mother; having understood it to predict that he have intercourse (μειχθῆναι/μιγῆναι) with his mother, he makes it necessary that he commit incest. It is Oidipous’s misinterpretation that creates this necessity. The god’s actions, then, rather than being wilfull or irrational, are both necessary and just. This will have prompted the audience to attempt to restore the meaning that the god must have intended to convey with μειχθῆναι/μιγῆναι. Apollo may not have been informing Oidipous that he must mingle with his mother sexually (LSJ B1), but rather that he must be brought into contact with her (LSJ B2). Apollo appears to have been instructing Oidipous that he need only yield himself up to him to arrange for the meeting to happen. The god’s emphasis, then, is on the necessity that Oidipous allow the god to direct his movements. How this was to occur Oidipous never inquired, for as he has himself already explained, his response was to break off the consultation with the determination to direct his own path, to navigate by the stars. [Md] That was the opposite of what Apollo required of him, if he was to help him find his mother. From the perspective of its present insight, the audience can see that it was a grave error for Oidipous to break off the interview at that point; he should have sought more specific instruction, how he was to allow the god to lead him to his mother. [Mpe] [Mipd] That he married his mother shows not that that was what the god had in mind, but rather that when Oidipous broke off the interview believing that the god had foretold marriage with his mother, this placed upon the god a new necessity; that of realizing the prophecy as Oidipous was misinterpreting it. Oidipous’s error elucidates the principle of prophetic necessity; for prophecy to have meaning, it must be fulfilled as interpreted. [Dnc]