Oedipus Rex reveals the prophecy which caused him to leave Corinth (791-93): "that I was fated to lie with my mother," "and show to daylight an accursed breed" "which men would not endure, and I was doomed" "to be murderer of the father that begot me." The implication of Laius's oracle is ambiguous. One interpretation considers that the presentation of Laius's oracle in this play differs from that found in Aeschylus's Oedipus trilogy produced in 467 BC. Helaine Smith argues: Sophocles had the option of making the oracle to Laius conditional ("if" Laius has a son, that son will kill him) or
Oedipus Rex of Attic tragedy. No other shows an equal degree of art in the development of the plot; and this excellence depends on the powerful and subtle drawing of the characters." Cedric Whitman noted that "the "Oedipus Rex" passes almost universally for the greatest extant Greek play..." Whitman himself regarded the play as "the fullest expression of this conception of tragedy," that is the conception of tragedy as a "revelation of the evil lot of man," where a man may have "all the equipment for glory and honor" but still have "the greatest effort to do good" end in "the evil