Tiresias
Why did Tiresias turn into a woman?
How did Tiresias become blind?
What role did Tiresias play in the Odyssey?
How does Tiresias die?
Tiresias, in Greek mythology, a blind Theban seer, the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo. He is a participant in several well-known legends and is renowned for his unique experience of living as both man and woman. Tiresias served as an adviser to generations of rulers at the ancient city of Thebes, from its founder Cadmus to King Oedipus. Unlike most mortals, who became shadowy spirits after death, Tiresias’s consciousness and prophetic powers did not deplete in the underworld. Among the ancient authors who mention him are Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, and Ovid.
Tiresias’s transformation
A well-known myth, from the Bibliothēkē of Pseudo-Apollodorus and later elaborated upon by other writers, recounts that as a young man, Tiresias came upon two serpents mating on Mount Cyllene (a mountain in the Peloponnese peninsula) or Mount Cithaeron in Greece. After wounding and killing the female snake, Tiresias was changed into a woman—a transformation sometimes attributed to Hera, queen of the gods. He lived for several years as a woman and, according to some accounts, gave birth to a daughter, Manto, who was a prophetess. Upon encountering mating serpents again, perhaps the same pair, and striking the male serpent, he was restored to male form. Since he had lived as both man and woman, Zeus, king of gods, and Hera asked him to settle a dispute over which sex experienced greater pleasure in love. When Tiresias declared that women did, Hera, in anger, struck him blind. Zeus, unable to reverse the curse, compensated him with the gift of prophecy and an unusually long life.
Another version, preserved in Greek poet Callimachus’s “Hymn to Athena,” has it that Tiresias was blinded by the goddess of war, Athena, after he saw her bathing. Chariclo, who was adored by Athena, begged her to help him, so instead of restoring his ability to see the physical world, Athena gave him the ability to see the future.
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In the Odyssey
In Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey (725–675 bce), at the sorceress Circe’s bidding, the hero Odysseus journeys to the underworld and performs a ritual to summon the dead, seeking guidance for his troubled voyage home. Among the insubstantial shades that gather, only Tiresias retains his prophetic mind. The blind seer warns Odysseus that the sea god Poseidon will continue to hinder his journey because Odysseus had blinded the cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son. Tiresias adds that Odysseus must not harm the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios on the island of Thrinacia. He prophesies that Odysseus will lose all his companions and will find his house plagued by his wife Penelope’s suitors. Tiresias also foretells Odysseus’s ultimate fate: a mild death in extreme old age.
The prophet of Thebes
In Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex (430–426 bce), Oedipus, the ruler of Thebes, summons the elderly prophet to help identify the murderer of the previous king, Laius. Tiresias, knowing the terrible truth, initially refuses to speak but when pressed reveals that Oedipus himself is the killer he seeks—and that Oedipus has unknowingly murdered his father and married his mother, Jocasta, the queen of Thebes.
Euripides’ tragedy Phoenician Women recounts the conflict that followed Oedipus’s death. His sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, argue about succeeding to the Theban throne and decide to rule in alternate years. Eteocles, however, refuses to give up the throne to his brother after the first term. Following their dispute, Polyneices’ father-in-law, King Adrastus, leads an army of seven champions against Thebes in the war known as the Seven Against Thebes. During the conflict Tiresias prophesies that Thebes would survive only if Menoeceus, the son of Creon (brother of Jocasta), sacrifices himself. The prediction is fulfilled when Menoeceus leaps from the city walls. The story of the Seven Against Thebes was also treated by the dramatist Aeschylus.
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When the sons of the seven fallen champions, known as the Epigoni, or second generation of warriors, return a generation later and defeat Thebes, Tiresias advises the survivors to flee while sending ambassadors to negotiate peace. Tiresias dies during the flight from Thebes after the city’s defeat by the Epigoni. According to tradition, he drank from the Boeotian spring of Tilphussa, which was poisoned, and expired.
Cultural significance
The figure of Tiresias recurs in later European literature, both as prophet and as man-woman, in such works as Guillaume Apollinaire’s Surrealist play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (first performed 1917; “The Breasts of Tiresias”) and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922).