The two best-known essays on Seneca's Oedipus, by Willy Schetter and Gerhard Müller, argue that the play is fundamentally a tragedy of fate, and Müller goes so far as to call fate the ‘principal actor.’ Although it may be possible to question the importance that Müller attaches to the role of fate, it is clear that the universe of Oedipus is a determined one. Not only have Oedipus' murder and marriage been predestined, but the plague and its consequences have as well. If, however, fate's control of Oedipus' actions is indisputable, it is linked with a fundamental difficulty of interpretation: that of Oedipus' guilt, which the play in the end seems emphatically to affirm (see 875f. and 1025f. and below, pp. 149f.). What does it mean to speak of moral responsibility in the absence of free choice? The notion of Oedipus' guilt would seem particularly hard to reconcile with a Stoic interpretation of the play; for Oedipus' conscious intent is virtuous, and Stoicism judges action according to the will of the agent, not its result. The view that Oedipus is innocent, moreover, appeals to our own moral logic, with its individualistic bias. Yet in the end Oedipus himself is convinced of his guilt; otherwise his self-mutilation would be unintelligible. It is at least evident that Seneca is bringing prominently to our attention a conception of wrong-doing that cannot be understood in terms of Stoic ethics.