Forth from this region an accursèd thing
(For such is fostered in the land and stains
Our sacred clime), nor cherish it past cure ...
By exile or by purging blood with blood,
Since blood it is that shakes us with such storm.
It is of course possible to maintain that a penalty which permitted the option of death or exile was the punishment of parricide in the early stages of the ‘pollution system,’ though such an option was not permitted for kin-slaying in Attic law. We have suggested[42] that it was not the pollution doctrine which of itself abolished private execution, and exile was permitted, as we think,[43] until private execution was abolished. It is therefore legally possible that a legend of the early pollution era contained such an oracular penalty for parricide, in days when political synoekism had not yet established State execution. We might be inclined to interpret in this way the description of the oracle which is given—but only at the end of the play!—by Oedipus himself[44]:
His sacred utterance was express and clear,
The parricide, the unholy, should be slain;
and he requests Kreon to execute the penalty[45]:
Fling me with speediest swiftness from the land