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Tiresias

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For other uses, seeTiresias (disambiguation).
"Everes" redirects here. For the butterfly genus, seeCupido (butterfly).
Pietro della Vecchia,Tiresias transformed into a woman,17th century.

InGreek mythology,Tiresias(/taɪˈriːsiəs/;Ancient Greek:Τειρεσίας,romanized:Teiresías) was a blindprophetofApolloinThebes,famous forclairvoyanceand for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherdEveresand thenymphChariclo.[1]Tiresias participated fully in seven generations in Thebes, beginning as advisor toCadmushimself.

Mythology[edit]

Eighteen allusions to mythic Tiresias, noted byLuc Brisson,[2]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.

Blindness and gift of prophecy[edit]

Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera. Engraving byJohann Ulrich Krausc. 1690. Taken fromDie Verwandlungen des Ovidii(The Metamorphoses of Ovid).

Like otheroracles,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.Pliny the Eldercredits Tiresias with the invention ofaugury.[3]

OnMount Cyllenein thePeloponnese,[4]as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair with his stick.Herawas displeased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, includingManto,who also possessed the gift of prophecy. 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 toHyginus,trampled on them.[5]Either way, as a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. This ancient story was recorded inlost linesofHesiod.[6]

InHellenisticand Roman times Tiresias' sex-change was embellished and expanded into seven episodes, with appropriate amours in each, probably written by the AlexandrianPtolemaeus Chennus,[citation needed]but attributed byEustathiusto Sostratus of Phanagoria's lostelegiacTiresias.[7]Tiresias is presented as a complexlyliminalfigure, mediating between humankind and the gods, male and female, blind and seeing, present and future, this world and theUnderworld.[8]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 becomes a man once again after an encounter with theMuses,until finallyAphroditeturns him into a woman again and then into a mouse.[9]

According to the mythographic compendiumBibliotheke,[10]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. An alternative story told byPherecydeswas followed inCallimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas"; in it, Tiresias was blinded byAthenaafter he stumbled onto her bathing naked.[11]His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged Athena to undo her curse, but the goddess could not; instead, she cleaned his ears,[10]giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift ofaugury.In a separate episode,[12]Tiresias was drawn into an argument betweenHeraand her husbandZeus,on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed, or, as Zeus claimed, the woman. As Tiresias had experienced both, Tiresias replied, "a man enjoyed one tenth the pleasure and a woman nine tenths."[13]Hera instantly struck him blind for hisimpiety.Zeus could do nothing to stop her or reverse her curse, but in recompense he did give Tiresias the gift offoresight[14]and a lifespan of seven lives.

He is said to have understood the language of birds and could divine the future from indications in a fire, or smoke. However, it was the communications of the dead he relied on the most, menacing them when they were late to attend him.[15]

Tiresias makes a dramatic appearance in theOdyssey,book XI, in which Odysseus calls up the spirits of the dead (thenekyia). AsPersephoneallows Tiresias to retain his powers of clairvoyance after death, he is able to see Odysseus without drinking the blood usually required for souls in the underworld to become conscious again. "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; evenOdysseus' own mothercannot accomplish this, but must drink deep before her ghost can see her son for himself. "[16]

As a seer, "Tiresias" was "a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history" (Graves 1960, 105.5). InGreek 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 tellsAmphitryonof Zeus and Alcmena and warns the mother ofNarcissusthat the boy will thrive as long as he neverknows himself.This is his emblematic role intragedy(see below). Like mostoracles,he is generally extremely reluctant to offer the whole of what he sees in his visions.

Tiresias and Thebes[edit]

Tiresias appears toOdysseusduring thenekyiaofOdysseyxi, in thiswatercolorwith tempera by the Anglo-SwissJohann Heinrich Füssli,c. 1780–85.

Tiresias appears as the name of a recurring character in several stories andGreek tragediesconcerning the legendary history ofThebes.InThe Bacchae,byEuripides,Tiresias appears withCadmus,the founder and first king of Thebes, to warn the current kingPentheusagainst denouncingDionysusas a god. Along with Cadmus, he dresses as a worshiper of Dionysus to go up the mountain to honor the new god with the Theban women in their Bacchic revels.

InSophocles'Oedipus Rex,Oedipus,the king of Thebes, calls upon Tiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous kingLaius.At first, Tiresias refuses to give a direct answer and instead hints that the killer is someone Oedipus really does not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he has no foresight and then that Tiresias had a hand in the murder, he reveals that in fact it was Oedipus himself who had (unwittingly) committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus throws him out of the palace, but then afterwards realizes the truth.

Tiresias also appears in Sophocles'Antigone.Creon,now king of Thebes, refuses to allow Polynices to be buried. His niece,Antigone,defies the order and is caught; Creon decrees that she is to be buried alive. The gods express their disapproval of Creon's decision through Tiresias, who tells Creon 'the city is sick through your fault.'

Tiresias and his prophecy are also involved in the story of theEpigoni.

Death[edit]

Tiresias died after drinking water from the tainted springTilphussa,where he was impaled by an arrow of Apollo.[17][18]

His shade descended to theAsphodel Meadows,the first level ofHades.After his death, he was visited in the underworld byOdysseus,to whom he gave valuable advice concerning the rest of his odyssey, such as how to get pastScyllaandCharybdis.He also advised him not to eatthe cattle of HeliosonThrinacia(advice which Odysseus' men did not follow, which led to them getting killed by Zeus' thunderbolts during a storm).

Caduceus[edit]

Main article:Caduceus

Connections with the paired serpents on thecaduceusare often made (Brisson 1976:55–57).

In the arts[edit]

  • The figure of Tiresias has been much invoked by fiction writers and poets. At the climax ofLucian of Samosata'sNecyomantia,Tiresias inHadesis asked "what is the best way of life?" to which he responds, "the life of the ordinary guy: forget philosophers and their metaphysics."[19]
  • Tiresias appears in Dante'sInferno,in Canto XX, among the soothsayers in the Fourth Bolgia of the Eighth Circle, where augurs are punished by having their heads turned backwards; since they claimed to see the future in life, in the afterlife they are denied any forward vision.
  • The Breasts of Tiresias(French:Les mamelles de Tirésias) is asurrealistplay byGuillaume Apollinairewritten in1903.The play received its first production in a revised version in1917.[20]In his preface to the play, the poet invented the word "surrealism"to describe his new style ofdrama.[21]The French composerFrancis Poulencwrote anopera with the same namebased on Apollinaire's 1917 play. It was first performed at theOpéra-Comiquein 1947.[22]
  • "Tiresias" the poem byAlfred, Lord Tennyson,narrated by the persona Tiresias himself, incorporates the notion that his prophecies, though always true, are generally not believed.[23]
  • Tiresias is featured inT. S. Eliot's poemThe Waste Land(Section III, The Fire Sermon) and in a note Eliot states that Tiresias is "the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest."[24]
  • Tiresias appears in Three Cantos III (1917) and cantos I and 47 in the long poemThe CantosbyEzra Pound.[25][26]
  • Virginia Woolf'sOrlandois a modernist novel that uses major events in Tiresias' life.[27][28][29]
  • Tiresiasis a ballet choreographed byFrederick Ashtonto music byConstant Lambertfirst performed at theRoyal Opera House Covent Garden,London, on 9 July 1951.[30]
  • "The Cinema Show",a song by the British progressive rock bandGenesisfrom the 1973 albumSelling England by the Poundrefers to Tiresias's sex change experience: "I have crossed between the poles, for me there's no mystery. Once a man, like the sea I raged, once a woman, like the earth I gave".
  • "Castle Walls", a song by American progressive rock bandStyxon their 1977 albumThe Grand Illusion,makes reference to Tiresias in the refrain "Far beyond these castle walls; Where I thought I heard Tiresias say; Life is never what it seems; And every man must meet his destiny".
  • Tiresia,a2003French filmdirected byBertrand Bonellouses the legend of Tiresias to tell the story of a moderntransgenderperson.[31]
  • Carol Ann Duffy'sThe World's Wifeincludes the poem "fromMrs Tiresias "which narrates the experience of Tiresias's wife after his transformation.[32]
  • Inspired by Tiresias, Takeba Kumiko wrote the mangaTiresias Cage,which was published in 2022 and completed in two volumes. The work follows the protagonist Chihaya Katsuragi, who finds himself transforming into a woman's body.[33]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^Of a line born of the dragon's teeth sown byCadmus(Bibliotheke,III.6.7); see also Hyginus,Fabula75.
  2. ^Luc Brisson, 1976.Le mythe de Tirésias: essai d'analyse structurale(Leiden: Brill).
  3. ^Gaius Plinius Secundus,Naturalis Historia7.12.3
  4. ^EustathiusandJohn Tzetzesplace this episode onMount Cithaeronin Boeotia, near the territory of Thebes.
  5. ^Hygini Fabulae,LXXV
  6. ^According toBibliothekeIII.6.7, and inPhlegon,Mirabilia4.
  7. ^Eustathius,Commentary on Homer's Odyssey10.494.
  8. ^Fully explored instructuralistmode, with many analogies drawn from ambivalent sexualities considered to exist among animals in Antiquity, in Brisson 1976.
  9. ^Campanile, Domitilla; Carlà-Uhink, Filippo; Facella, Margherita (February 23, 2017).TransAntiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World.Routledge.p.57.ISBN9781138941205.
  10. ^abBibliothekeIII.6.7.
  11. ^This, readable as a doublet of theActaeonmytheme,was the version preferred by the English poetsTennysonand evenSwinburne.
  12. ^The episode is briefly noted by Hyginus,Fabula75;Ovidtreats it at length inMetamorphosesIII.
  13. ^BibliothekeIII.6.7.
  14. ^The blind prophet with inner sight as recompense for blindness is a familiarmytheme.
  15. ^William Godwin (1876)."Lives of the Necromancers".pp. 46–47.
  16. ^Warner, Marina.Monuments and Maidens: the allegory of the female form.Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. p. 329
  17. ^Schachter, A. (2016-03-07),"Tiresias",Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics,Oxford University Press,doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6479,ISBN978-0-19-938113-5,retrieved2023-12-29
  18. ^Dussol, Vincent (2016-08-29)."Narratives of Secrecy: The Poetry of Leland Hickman".Revue française d'études américaines.spécial 145 (4): 10–20.doi:10.3917/rfea.145.0010.ISSN0397-7870.
  19. ^Branham, R. B. (1989). "The Wisdom of Lucian's Tiresias".The Journal of Hellenic Studies.109:159–60.doi:10.2307/632040.JSTOR632040.S2CID163139952.
  20. ^Brockett and Hildy (2003, 439).
  21. ^Banham (1998, 1043).
  22. ^Albert Bermel, "Apollinaire's Male Heroine"Twentieth Century Literature20.3 (July 1974), pp. 172–182.
  23. ^Pearsall, Cornelia (2007).Tennyson's Rapture: Transformation in the Victorian Dramatic Monologue.Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 303–306.ISBN9781435630468.
  24. ^Harold Bloom (2007).T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.Infobase Publishing. p. 182.ISBN978-0-7910-9307-8.
  25. ^A. David Moody (11 October 2007).Ezra Pound: Poet: I: The Young Genius 1885-1920.OUP Oxford. p. 315.ISBN978-0-19-921557-7.
  26. ^Carroll Franklin Terrell (1980).A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound.University of California Press. pp. 1, 2, 184.ISBN978-0-520-03687-1.
  27. ^"Orlando – Modernism Lab".yale.edu.Archived fromthe originalon 22 June 2019.Retrieved31 January2019.
  28. ^Androgyny in Modern Literature,Tracey Hargreaves, 2005,p. 91.
  29. ^Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries,David Carrier, 2006,p. 4.
  30. ^Alexander Bland,The Royal Ballet: The First Fifty Years.London: Threshold Books, 1981, p286.
  31. ^Dawson, Tom."BBC - Movies - review - Tiresia".BBC.Retrieved14 October2017.
  32. ^"The World's Wife: From Mrs Tiresias - Carol Ann Duffy @ SWF 2013".YouTube.9 November 2013.Retrieved24 January2023.
  33. ^MangaDex."Tiresias Cage".

References[edit]

  • Robert Graves,1960 (revised edition).The Greek Myths
  • Luc Brisson,1976.Le mythe de Tirésias: essai d'analyse structurale(Leiden: Brill) Structural analysis by a follower ofClaude Lévi-Straussand a repertory of literary references and works of art in an iconographical supplement.
  • Nicole Loraux,The experiences of Tiresias: the feminine and the Greek man,Princeton, 1995
  • Gherardo Ugolini,Untersuchungen zur Figur des Sehers Teiresias,Tübingen, 1995
  • E. Di Rocco,Io Tiresia: metamorfosi di un profeta,Roma, 2007
  • Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911)."Teiresias".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links[edit]

  • Media related toTiresiasat Wikimedia Commons
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