Week 6 – Mike Calle

LINES 813-836

JOCASTA: Do not concern yourself about this matter;
listen to me and learn that human beings
815 have no part in the craft of prophecy.
Of that I’ll show you a short proof.
There was an oracle once that came to Laius, —
I will not say that it was Phoebus’ own,
but it was from his servants— and it told him
820 that it was fate that he should die a victim
at the hands of his own son, a son to be born
of Laius and me. But, see now, he,
the king, was killed by foreign highway robbers
at a place where three roads meet—so goes the story;
825 and for the son—before three days were out
after his birth King Laius pierced his ankles
and by the hands of others cast him forth
upon a pathless hillside. So Apollo
failed to fulfill his oracle to the son,
830 that he should kill his father, and to Laius
also proved false in that the thing he feared,
death at his son’s hands, never came to pass.
So clear in this case were the oracles,
so clear and false. Give them no heed, I say;
835 what God discovers need of, easily
he shows to us himself.

In this passage, Jocasta informs the new king, Oedipus, about an oracle who told the old king Laius that it was “Fate” that he would die by his own son. But this Oracle was not true because the king’s death was by highway robbers. He informs the new King Oedipus to show him an example and to not be feared because he had his own beliefs. He believed that whatever God has planned, “he shows to us himself”(836). Furthermore, he tells this story to him because he and King Oedipus have a bond and trusted him with this information. This passage really interested me because of the choice of words that Jocasta uses, he described the setting very well, and it was as if I was there. The telling of the story was well-thought-out, and he got to every detail, even the brutal oracle’s belief in thinking that the son will kill the king.