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
Tragedy imagination which was ‘so encompassing, so receptive to the plurality of diverse orders of experience.’ When compared to the drama of Greek antiquity and French classicism Shakespeare’s forms are ‘richer but hybrid'. Aristotle wrote in his work "Poetics" that tragedy is characterised by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune ("Peripeteia"). Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the "Eumenides", but he says that the change from good to bad as in "Oedipus Rex" is preferable because this induces pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in