Oedipus Rex unconditional (Laius "will" have a son who will kill him). Both Aeschylus and Euripides write plays in which the oracle is conditional; Sophocles ... chooses to make Laius's oracle unconditional and thus removes culpability for his sins from Oedipus, for he could not have done other than what he did, no matter what action he took. This interpretation is supported by Jocasta's repetition of the oracle at lines 854–55: "Loxias declared that the king should be killed by/ his own son." In the Greek, Jocasta uses the verb "chrênai": "to be fated, necessary." This iteration of the oracle seems to
Jocasta Innes Jocasta Innes Jocasta Innes (21 May 1934 – 20 April 2013) was a British writer, journalist and businesswoman. Innes was born in Nanjing, China, the eldest of three daughters born to a Shell Oil executive and an Irish-Argentinian teacher who ran a school for the children of other British-born residents. By the age of twelve she had lived on every continent in the world, except Antarctica. After a spell at a Coptic convent in Cairo, she was educated at Bedford High School from 1949 and Girton College, Cambridge where she read Modern Languages. One of her first jobs was with