Thus it may be that, in the point which we are discussing, as in various other respects, the religious beliefs of a people do not faithfully represent their general notions of moral responsibility. It is profoundly wrong to assume, from the legend of Oedipus and other similar cases, that the ancient Greeks, in general, held a person "equally responsible for an accident which occurs to him, and for an act of which the agent is aware." Even the transgression of a sacred law, when committed in ignorance, seems to have excited pitiful horror rather than moral indignation. Oedipus had killed his father in self-defence, and married his mother, perfectly ignorant of his relation to them. The gods punished the Thebans with pestilence for harbouring such a wretch on their soil. But when "time that sees all, found him out in his unwitting sin," it was not blame, but terror and deep compassion for the unhappy man that, according to the tragedian,[113] spoke from the lips of the people. Moreover, in the latter tragedy Oedipus persistently vindicates his innocence:--"Whatever I have done was done unwittingly"--"Before the law I have no guilt." And, addressing himself to Creon, who has accused him of parricide and incest, he {235} exclaims:--"O shameless soul, where, thinkest thou, falls this thy taunt,--on my age, or on thine own? Bloodshed--incest --misery--all this thy lips have launched against me,--all this that I have borne, woe is me! by no choice of mine: for such was the pleasure of the gods, wroth, haply, with the race from of old. . . Tell me, now, --if, by voice of oracle, some divine doom was coming on my sire, that he should die by a son's hand, how couldst thou justly reproach me therewith, who was then unborn, whom no sire had yet begotten, no mother's womb conceived? And if, when born to woe--as I was born--I met my sire in strife, and slew him, all ignorant what I was doing, and to whom,--how couldst thou justly blame the unknowing deed?[114] Never was a more pathetic appeal made to the court of Justice from the indiscriminate verdict of angry gods. [Footnote 113: Sophocles, _[OE]dipus Tyrannus_.] [Footnote 114: _Idem_, _[OE]dipus Coloneus_, 960 _sqq._ (Jebb's translation, p. 155).]