In his philosophic manual, The Enchiridion, Epictetus teaches that some circumstances - emotions such as desire and aversion, temperance, and morality, for example - are within the individual's power to control, while others - such as fate, sickness, health, poverty, infamy, and death - are not. The individual possesses control over his own emotions, opinions, and actions, but he has no power over fate or over the actions or opinions of others. Seeking to control circumstances over which the individual has no power will merely lead to frustration. One should seek to avoid only those negative circumstances which are within the individual's scope, and refrain from both aversion and desire when contemplating events beyond that scope. Such events ought to be neither feared nor desired, but must simply be dealt with to the best of one's ability.
      Epictetus particularly wished his doctrine to be applied when consulting an oracle. At this time, one must remember that any happenstance which is beyone one's personal control should be considered neither desireable nor fearful, and should therefore be neither sought out nor avoided. The purpose of conferring with the oracle is to determine what event will happen, not whether the result of that event will be 'good' or 'bad'. Says Epictetus, "When you have recourse to divination, remember that you know not what the event will be, and you come to learn it of the diviner; but of what nature it is you knew before coming... For if it is among the things not within our own power, it can by no means be either good or evil... First clearly understand that every event is indifferent and nothing to you, of whatever sort it may be; for it will be in your power to make a right use of it, and this no one can hinder." (p.30)
      The consultation of oracles plays the part of a catalyst in the Sophoclean tragedy Oedipus Rex. The King and Queen of Thebes, Laius and Jocasta, are persuaded to abandon their infant son upon a hillside to die of exposure after hearing of what his fate will be if he lives. Recalls Jocasta, "There was an oracle once that came to Laius,...and it told him that it was fate that he should die a victim at the hands of his own son, a son to be born of Laius and me... Before three days were out after his birth King Laius pierced his ankles and by the hands of others cast him forth upon a pathless hillside." (p.41) Oedipus, the adopted son of the King Polybus and Queen Merope, is persuaded to flee their city of Corinth when he hears the fate that lies in store for him: "Phoebus foretold... desperate horrors to befall me, that I was fated to lie with my mother, and to show daylight to an accursed breed which men would not endure, and I was doomed to be murderer of the father that begot me. When I heard this I fled... to somewhere where I should not see fulfilled the infamies told in the dreadful oracle." (p.45) Neither King Laius and Queen Jocasta nor the young Oedipus possess the self-control counciled by Epictetus which would enable them to refrain from fearing the prophesied events and instead to meet them with decorum.
      Epictetus insists that circumstances such as fate, which are beyond the individual's control, must be neither feared nor desired. He warns that in fleeing from or striving toward circumstances which the individual is powerless to control, one sets onesself up for failure. Epictetus would counsel calmness and dignity upon receipt of an oracle such as those given to Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus. He would caution against acting out of fear or attempting to avert a fate which cannot be averted. Epictetus would urge all parties involved to accept the roles assigned to them by the gods and to strive to act out their parts with grace and dignity. This sense of dignity and morality would not admit to the abandonment of a helpless infant on a hillside; nor would it involve fleeing in a panic from the city where one was raised. It would require that the King and Queen raise their threatening child, and that Oedipus remain in the city of his childhood to face the fate that the gods had designed for him. If Laius and Jocasta had kept their son, he would have grown up knowing who his parents were and would not then have been able to unknowingly commit the crime of patricide or to take his mother as wife. If Oedipus had stayed in the city of Corinth, where he was raised by Polybus and Merope, he would not have come into unheeding contact with his birth parents. By calling their fate evil and seeking at all costs to avoid it, Oedipus, Laius, and Jocasta brought disaster down upon their own heads. Epictetus would claim that the only possibile way to "make a right use of" one's fate is to meet it proudly; Sophocles' characters assuredly compounded the tragedy of their fates by being unwilling to do so.
      Sophocles' story of the downfall of Oedipus seems to argue that there is no escaping fate, no matter how fiercely one battles against it. Epictetus does not dispute this. Indeed, he claims that one should not resist fate, but should instead follow the path assigned to one by the gods with grace and composure. In the Enchiridion, Epictetus quotes Cleanthes in order to communicate his point:

Conduct me, Zeus, and thou, O Destiny,
Wherever your decrees have fixed my lot.
I follow cheerfully; and, did I not,
Wicked and wretched, I must follow still. (p.39)

Who'er yields properly to Fate is deemed
Wise among men, and knows the laws of Heaven. (p.39)

Bibliography:

Oedipus the King, Sophocles, translated by David Greene, 1991
The Enchiridion, Epictetus, translated by Thomas Higginson, 1948