Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

W HERE T HREE R OADS M EET Oedipus was beginning to enjoy his wanderings. As a prince of Corinth he had become accustomed to being escorted everywhere by stewards, pages and bodyguards. He found life on the road as a free and unaccompanied traveller full of interest. He took pleasure in finding ways to make the small supply of coins in his purse go further. He slept in hedgerows, offered himself up in each village and town he came to as a gardener, schoolteacher, minstrel, baker’s assistant or whatever might be needed. He was good with his hands, fast on his feet and matchlessly quick with his wits. Mental arithmetic, languages, accounting, the memorising of long lines of poetry – they all came easily and quickly to his supremely agile brain. One afternoon, in the countryside outside the small town of Daulis, he found himself at a place where three roads met. While he stood debating with himself which one to take, an opulent chariot sped towards him. The old man driving stood up in his seat and tried to force him out of the way. ‘Move, peasant!’ he shouted and struck down with a whip. This was more than the proud Oedipus could bear. He snatched at the whip and pulled, jerking the old man out of the chariot. Four armed men jumped down from the back and ran towards him, shouting. Oedipus wrested a sword from one and in the fight that followed killed three. The fourth ran away. When Oedipus stooped to examine the old man, he discovered that he had fatally broken his neck in the fall. Oedipus covered the four corpses with earth and commended their spirits to the underworld. Uncoupling the horses from the chariot, he slapped their hindquarters and sent them skittering down the road. Once again he debated which way he should take. In his head he named the choices ‘Road One’, ‘Road Two’ and ‘Road Three’, plucked a branch from an olive tree and picked off the leaves one by one, counting as he did so. ‘One, two, three … one, two, three … one, two, three … one, two! So be it. I take Road Two.’ What might have happened had one more leaf – or one fewer – grown on that branch we can never know. Matters of immense import may depend on such issues, but we can never do more than guess the outcomes of the roads we do not take. Oedipus walked cheerfully down Road Two and that was that. His fate was sealed.