arrive, and arrive now, as the direct result of something said or done by Œdipus, just as the arrival of the old Theban, with his crushing testimony, is due to the king’s own summons? No doubt this occurrence is meant to mirror the facts of life, which include accidents as well as events plainly traceable to character. At this point should be mentioned other possible faults, whether inherent in the drama or antecedent to it. Some of the preliminary facts are to a high degree unlikely. These points are three. First, Œdipus and Jocasta, though each separately has received oracular warning about a marriage, make no kind of inquiry at the time of their own wedding. Secondly, Œdipus all these years has never heard or inquired into the circumstances in which Laius was killed. Third, Jocasta has never yet been told of the incident at Corinth which sent Œdipus to Delphi; indeed she has apparently not even heard that he is the son of the king and queen of Corinth.[322] Within the play itself is the strange feature that when Tiresias accuses Œdipus of slaying Laius and hints darkly at greater horrors—hints which in spite of their obscurity might surely (one would think) have united themselves in the mind of Œdipus with the oracle of long ago—Œdipus is merely moved to fury, not to misgiving.[323] Now of the first three difficulties it must be owned that despite the palliatives suggested, they are irritating. These things are “impossible,” or, if not, they are oddly irrational, which is the same thing so far as the enjoyment of dramatic art is concerned. They are, however, to be explained thus. The unquestioning marriage of Œdipus and Jocasta is a _datum_ of the legend with which the poet could not tamper. All that the dramatist could do he did—he placed the unlikely fact “outside the plot”[324] and dwelt on it as little as possible. Indeed, he hints at some sort of excuse—the confusion in Thebes owing to the oppression of the Sphinx.[325] Next, the postponement of explanations about the death of Laius and the exile of Œdipus from Corinth is a direct result of dramatic treatment. Just as Æschylus,[326] in order to handle dramatically a religious question, the bearings of which fill the whole of time, insists on contracting the issue to a single great instance, so Sophocles forces into the compass of one day’s happenings the life of years. In actuality, this tragedy would have been spread over a great lapse of time. The climax and the horror would have been much the same essentially, but the poet presents the whole in a closely-knit nexus of occurrence, so as to make the spectator feel the full impact undissipated by graduations.