In Greek mythology, Tiresias (/taɪˈriːsiəs/; Ancient Greek: Τειρεσίας, romanized: Teiresías) was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo.[1] Tiresias participated fully in seven generations in Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus, the founder of Thebes.

Mythology

Eighteen allusions to mythic Tiresias, noted by Luc Brisson, fall into three groups: the first recounts Tiresias' sex-change episode and later his encounter with Zeus and Hera; the second group recounts his blinding by Athena; the third, all but lost, seems to have recounted the misadventures of Tiresias.[2]

Sex-change

On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese,[3][note 1] Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes and hit them with his stick, which displeased goddess Hera who punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married, and had children, including his daughter Manto who also possessed the gift of prophecy. Afterwards, as told by Phlegon, god of prophecy Apollo informed Tiresias: if she spots copulating snakes and similarly harms them, she will return to her previous form. After seven years as a woman,[note 2] Tiresias found mating snakes; depending on the myth, she either made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according to Hyginus and Phlegon, trampled them. In both outcomes, Tiresias was released from the sentence and changed back to a man.[note 3][4][5][3][6]

According to Eustathius, Tiresias was originally a woman who promised Apollo her favours in exchange for musical lessons, only to reject him afterwards. 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. She became a man once again after an encounter with the Muses, until finally Aphrodite turned him into a woman again and then into a mouse.[7]

Blindness and gift of prophecy

The mythographic compendium Bibliotheke, lists different stories about the possible cause of Tiresias' blindness. One legend says he was "blinded by the gods because he revealed their secrets to men". While Pherecydes and Callimachus' fifth hymn, The Baths of Pallas, provided a different story—"the youthful Tiresias" was blinded by Athena after he came to sate his thirst at the bubbling spring, where Athena and her favourite attendant, the nymph Chariclo (mother of Tiresias) were enjoying a "cool plunge in the fair-flowing spring of Hippocrene on Mount Helicon". Pherecydes, in particular, finishes the story with Tiresias' mother Chariclo begging Athena to undo the curse, but she "could not do so". Instead, Athena "cleansed his ears", giving him the ability to understand birdsong (gift of augury), and granted him a staff of cornel-wood, "wherewith he walked like those who see".[4][note 4] In the version retold by Callimachus, Athena cried out in anger at the sight of Tiresias, and his eyes were "quenched in darkness". After Chariclo "reproached the goddess with blinding her son, Athena explained that she had not done so, but that the laws of the gods inflicted the penalty of blindness on anyone who beheld an immortal without his or her consent." To give Tiresias solace in his grief, Athena "promised to bestow on him the gifts of prophecy and divination, long life, and after death the retention of his mental powers undimmed" by the underworld.[8][note 5]

On another account behind Tiresias' blindness and his gift,[note 6] he was drawn into an argument between goddess Hera and her husband Zeus, arguing whether "the pleasures of love are felt more by women or by men", with Hera taking the side of men, Zeus putting himself in opposition, and Tiresias making the final judgement as someone who had experienced both pleasures. Tiresias said, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only; But a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart". Hera struck him blind, but Zeus, in recompense, gave Tiresias the gift of foresight[note 7] and a lifespan of "seven ordinary lives".[4]

Like other oracles, the circumstances in which Tiresias received his prophecies varied. Sometimes he would receive visions, listen for the songs of birds, or burn offerings or entrails, interpreting prophecies through pictures that appeared in the smoke. Pliny the Elder credited Tiresias with the invention of augury.[9] Journalist William Godwin highlighted the communications with the dead as his most valuable way to tell a prophecy, constraining the dead "to appear and answer his inquiries".[10][note 8]

Other myths

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Tiresias' "fame of prophecy was spread through all the cities of Aonia", and nymph Liriope was the first to request his prophecy, asking him about the future of her son Narcissus. Tiresias predicted that the boy would live a long life only if he never "came to know himself".

Tiresias has been a recurring character in stories and Greek tragedies concerning the legendary history of Thebes.

Death

Tiresias died after drinking water from the tainted spring Tilphussa, where he was impaled by an arrow of Apollo.[13][14] As claimed by Pausanias, the tomb of Tiresias was "ordinarily pointed out in the vicinity" of the Tilphusan Well near Thebes, Greece, while Pliny the Elder wrote that his burial site was located in Macedonia, marked with a monument.[9]

His shade descended to the Asphodel Meadows, the first level of Hades. Persephone allowed Tiresias to retain his powers of clairvoyance after death.[15]

After his death, the spirit of Tiresias was summoned from the underworld by Odysseus' sacrificial offering of a black sheep. Tiresias told Odysseus that he could return home if he was able to stay himself and his crew from eating the sacred livestock of Helios on the island of Thrinacia and that failure to do so would result in the loss of his ship and his entire crew. Odysseus' men, however, did not follow the advice and were killed by Zeus' thunderbolts during a storm.[16]

The souls inhabiting the underworld were usually required to drink the blood to become conscious again, but Tiresias was able to see Odysseus without drinking the blood. According to historian Marina Warner, it meant Tiresias remained sentient even in death—"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 herself."[15]

Analysis

As a seer, "Tiresias" was "a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history".[17] In Greek literature, Tiresias' pronouncements are always given in short maxims which are often cryptic (gnomic), but never wrong. 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. This is his emblematic role in tragedy. Like most oracles, he is generally extremely reluctant to offer the whole of what he sees in his visions.

Tiresias is presented as a complex liminal figure, mediating between humankind and the gods, male and female, blind and seeing, present and future, this world and the Underworld.[note 9]

In other cultures

Some theories hypothesize that Baba Yaga is a Slavic folklore version of Tiresias.[18]

In the arts

Notes

  1. Eustathius and John Tzetzes place this episode on Mount Cithaeron in Boeotia, near the territory of Thebes.[4]
  2. The period referenced from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
  3. At the account of Eustathius and Tzetzes, "it was by killing the female snake that Tiresias became a woman, and it was by afterwards killing the male snake that he was changed back into a man."
  4. The latter version, readable as a doublet of the Actaeon mytheme, was preferred by the English poets Tennyson and even Swinburne.
  5. James George Frazer remarks that Callimachus' account "probably followed Pherecydes".
  6. This account has been briefly mentioned by Hyginus, Fabula 75; Ovid treated it at length in Metamorphoses III.
  7. The blind prophet with inner sight as recompense for blindness is a familiar mytheme.
  8. Godwin referenced Statius' poem Thebaid.
  9. Fully explored in structuralist mode, with many analogies drawn from ambivalent sexualities considered to exist among animals in Antiquity.[2]

References

  1. Pseudo-Apollodorus (1921). "III.6.7". Bibliotheca. Translated by Frazer, James George. Harvard University Press.; see also Hyginus, Gaius Julius. "75". Fabulae.
  2. Brisson 1976.
  3. Phlegon. "4". Book of Marvels. Phlegon cites Hesiod, Dicaearchus, Klearchos, and Kallimachos as his sources.
  4. Pseudo-Apollodorus (1921). "Chapter III, sections 6.7 and 7". Apollodorus in 2 Volumes. Translated by Frazer, James George. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd.
  5. Hyginus, Gaius Julius. "LXXV". Hygini Fabulae.
  6. Ovid. "III". Metamorphoses. pp. 324–331.
  7. O'Hara, James J. (1996). "Sostratus Suppl. Hell. 733: A Lost, Possibly Catullan-Era Elegy on the Six Sex Changes of Tiresias". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 126: 176–178. doi:10.2307/370177. ISSN 0360-5949. JSTOR 370177.
  8. Callimachus. "Hymn V, 57–133". The Baths of Pallas.
  9. Pliny the Elder (1855). "7.12.3". The Natural History. Translated by Bostock, John; Riley, Henry Thomas. Henry G. Bohn.
  10. Godwin, William (1876). Lives of the Necromancers. pp. 46–47. OCLC 2657815.
  11. Euripides (1954). The Bacchae and Other Plays. Translated by Vellacott, Philip. Penguin Books. p. 198. OCLC 16890289.
  12. Euripides. Phoenician Women. pp. 913, 930.
  13. Schachter, A. (7 March 2016). "Tiresias". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6479. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
  14. Dussol, Vincent (29 August 2016). "Narratives of Secrecy: The Poetry of Leland Hickman". Revue française d'études américaines. spécial 145 (4): 10–20. doi:10.3917/rfea.145.0010. ISSN 0397-7870.
  15. Warner, Marina (2000). Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 329.
  16. Homer. "XI". Odyssey.
  17. Graves 1960, p. 105.5.
  18. Ugrešić, Dubravka (2009). Baba Yaga Laid an Egg [Baba Jaga je snijela jaje]. Canongate. pp. 316–426. ISBN 978-1-84767-066-3.
  19. Branham, R. B. (1989). "The Wisdom of Lucian's Tiresias". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 109: 159–160. doi:10.2307/632040. JSTOR 632040. S2CID 163139952.
  20. Brockett, Oscar G.; Hildy, Franklin J. (2003). History of the Theatre. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. p. 439. ISBN 978-0-205-35878-6.
  21. Banham, Martin (1998). The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (revised ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1043.
  22. Bermel, Albert (July 1974). "Apollinaire's Male Heroine". Twentieth Century Literature. 20 (3): 172–182.
  23. Pearsall, Cornelia (2007). Tennyson's Rapture: Transformation in the Victorian Dramatic Monologue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 303–306. ISBN 978-1-4356-3046-8.
  24. Bloom, Harold (2007). T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Infobase Publishing. p. 182. ISBN 978-0-7910-9307-8.
  25. Moody, A. David (11 October 2007). Ezra Pound: Poet: I: The Young Genius 1885-1920. OUP Oxford. p. 315. ISBN 978-0-19-921557-7.
  26. Terrell, Carroll Franklin (1980). A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound. University of California Press. pp. 1, 2, 184. ISBN 978-0-520-03687-1.
  27. "Orlando – Modernism Lab". yale.edu. Archived from the original on 22 June 2019.
  28. Hargreaves, Tracey (2005). Androgyny in Modern Literature. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-230-51057-9.
  29. Carrier, David (2006). Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-8223-3682-2.
  30. Bland, Alexander (1981). The Royal Ballet: The First Fifty Years. London: Threshold Books. p. 286. ISBN 978-0-385-17043-7.
  31. Dawson, Tom. "BBC - Movies - review - Tiresia". BBC.
  32. "The World's Wife: From Mrs Tiresias - Carol Ann Duffy @ SWF 2013". YouTube. 9 November 2013.

Sources

Further reading