46.  Sophocles' Oedipus the King, 729-734*

The Place Where Three Roads Meet

According to Mario L. D'Avanzo of Providence College, Oedipus's unwitting murder of his father, Laius, occurred where the roads converge from Delphi, Daulis, and Thebes.  Like most symbols in literature, this one is no accident because of the convergence of murder, incest, and prophecy. 

Delphi is the site of Apollo's oracle,  which initiated Oedipus's dilemma over his father and mother.  Daulis is the site of another famous incestuous event between Tereus, a king of Thrace, and Philomel, his sister-in-law, whom he raped.  So divine and mythic powers here collide with Oedipus, a symbol of "erring, unsuspecting, and even innocent humanity."

In addition to these observations from D'Avanzo, readers can notice that the other mystery behind this play--the question of Oedipus's origin also unites at this intersection where the act of killing his father while fleeing the oracle's prophecy [from Corinth and Delphi] that he would do just that sends Oedipus away from the adoptive parents who raised him and back down the road toward his biological mother [in Thebes], with whom he will sire four children. 

Paraphrased from the Explicator, 22.6 (1964):#46.