Again, in the post-Homeric form of the legend of the Theban Oedipus, it is Apollo who commands the Thebans to search for the murderer of Laius, and, when they have found him, to put him to death or to drive him from the land.[228] In this option of death or exile we have the normal Attic, and, therefore,[229] the normal Greek penalty for wilful murder. The direction which Apollo gives, in the _Oedipus Rex_ of Sophocles, is quite general.[230] Apollo speaks therefore as a lawgiver, and as a deity angered by unpunished homicide, rather than as a prophet; since he conceals for a time his knowledge of the slayer of Laius. In historical Greek law the penalty for parricide was invariably death. If Apollo had proclaimed the death penalty without the option of exile, for the slayer of Laius, the famous drama of Sophocles would have had to be considerably if not fundamentally altered. The area of the ‘search’ would have been limited to the kinsmen of the deceased Laius. The Homeric story of Oedipus is so very different from the later ‘tragic’ story that the evolution of the legend must have been attended with considerable difficulty. Legend-makers could not ignore the Homeric saga which told[231] how Oedipus, having slain his father, ruled over the Cadmeans, even though ‘the gods revealed these things to men.’ How was this fact to be explained from the standpoint of the post-Homeric doctrine of ‘pollution’ according to which all wilful parricides were inexorably put to death? We have suggested that Homer did not understand the mysterious immunity of Oedipus, and that this immunity was derived from a Pelasgian story, based on Pelasgian legal distinctions, to the effect that Oedipus did not really know that it was his father whom he slew, and that therefore Oedipus could not be regarded as a parricide of full guilt. It is also possible to suppose that the old Pelasgian story contained a reference to a further extenuation of Oedipus’ guilt, namely, a certain _provocation_ on the part of Laius and his attendants; Sophocles says that Oedipus was insulted by the herald of Laius and that Laius smote him on the head with his goad.[232] Sophocles tells us also that when all the facts concerning the death of Laius had come to light, Kreon, instead of proceeding to punish Oedipus, decided to consult again the oracle at Delphi. Thus, when Oedipus, anxious to avail himself of the option of exile, asks Kreon to drive him from the land, Kreon answers[233]: ‘Assuredly I should have already done so, did I not first desire to learn from the god what should be done.’ Now if the deed of Oedipus had nothing to extenuate it beyond the fact that he did not know his father when he slew him, he would still have had to suffer the penalties of wilful murder, namely, death or perpetual exile. If, then, Kreon did not immediately proceed to punish Oedipus, but consulted Apollo a second time, this must be attributed either to the element of involuntariness or