Free Will in Greek Thought

In responding to Maansi's post on Oedipus and Medea, I was thinking about free will and specifically the paradox of free will in relation to Oedipus. The paradox of free will is a pretty famous problem from philosophy: that of the seemingly irreconcilable inconsistency between free will and the determinism caused by omniscient gods. If an omniscient God/the gods already know everything that will happen in advance, then people cannot have control over their own actions. This problem has been dealt with by philosophers for centuries, particularly in the context of an omniscient, personal Christian God. In the Greek context, this can be considered in terms of prophecies and Oedipus.

In researching a little about views of free will in antiquity, I came across a few differing views. The problem of free will has been debated extensively, and some of the earliest arguments emerged from ancient Greek thinkers like Anaximander, Democritus, and Aristotle. Anaximander and other early cosmologists argued that the universe was deterministic and controlled by set laws. Democritus argued for the physical nature of the universe, which he posited were made of atoms, which in some ways implied a form of physical determinism, but did not feel that everything was controlled by arbitrary gods. Democritus and Aristotle both said people have some responsibility or at least the illusion of responsibility of our actions due to random occurrences that can't be dictated strictly deterministically. Later, Epicurus and the Stoics fleshed out different arguments both for and against determinism and free will. I thought it was interesting to examine some of the philosophical context of free will as opposed to fate, a theme that prominently figures in Oedipus.