Like most oracles, he is generally extremely reluctant to offer the whole of what he sees in his visions. This is his emblematic role in tragedy ( see below). Often when his name is attached to a mythic prophecy, it is introduced simply to supply a personality to the generic example of a seer, not by any inherent connection of Tiresias with the myth: thus it is Tiresias who tells Amphitryon of Zeus and Alcmena and warns the mother of Narcissus that the boy will thrive as long as he never knows himself. In Greek literature, Tiresias' pronouncements are always given in short maxims which are often cryptic ( gnomic), but never wrong. "So sentient is Tiresias, even in death," observes Marina Warner "that he comes up to Odysseus and recognizes him and calls him by name before he has drunk the black blood of the sacrifice even Odysseus' own mother cannot accomplish this, but must drink deep before her ghost can see her son for himself." Īs a seer, "Tiresias" was "a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history" (Graves 1960, 105.5).
Tiresias makes a dramatic appearance in the Odyssey, book XI, in which Odysseus calls up the spirits of the dead (the nekyia). However, it was the communications of the dead he relied on the most, menacing them when they were late to attend him. He is said to have understood the language of birds and could divine the future from indications in a fire, or smoke. Zeus could do nothing to stop her or reverse her curse, but in recompense he did give Tiresias the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven lives. As Tiresias had experienced both, Tiresias replied, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only." Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. In a separate episode, Tiresias was drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed, or, as Zeus claimed, the woman. His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged Athena to undo her curse, but the goddess could not instead, she cleaned his ears, giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury. An alternative story told by Pherecydes was followed in Callimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas" in it, Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. Īccording to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke, different stories were told of the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. She becomes a man once again after an encounter with the Muses, until finally Aphrodite turns him into a woman again and then into a mouse. She was turned by Apollo into a man, then again a woman under unclear circumstances, then a man by the offended Hera, then into a woman by Zeus. According to Eustathius, Tiresias was originally a woman who promised Apollo her favours in exchange for musical lessons, only to reject him afterwards. Tiresias is presented as a complexly liminal figure, mediating between humankind and the gods, male and female, blind and seeing, present and future, this world and the Underworld. In Hellenistic and Roman times Tiresias' sex-change was embellished and expanded into seven episodes, with appropriate amours in each, probably written by the Alexandrian Ptolemaeus Chennus, but attributed by Eustathius to Sostratus of Phanagoria's lost elegiac Tiresias. This ancient story was recorded in lost lines of Hesiod. Either way, as a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. After seven years as a woman, Tiresias again found mating snakes depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according to Hyginus, trampled on them. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. Hera was displeased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese, as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair with his stick.
Pliny the Elder credits Tiresias with the invention of augury. Like other oracles, how Tiresias obtained his information varied: sometimes, he would receive visions other times he would listen for the songs of birds, or ask for a description of visions and pictures appearing within the smoke of burnt offerings or entrails, and so interpret them. Taken from Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid). Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera.
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