Tiresias was the most famous prophet of the Greek mythological tradition. He was born in Thebes, the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo, and he was gifted with the gift of prophecy by Zeus himself, in return for a service that he had done the gods. The gift of prophecy was, however, bound up with the loss of his sight. In some versions, he was struck blind by Athena because he had seen her bathing; in others, he was struck blind by Hera because he had answered her too bluntly in a dispute with Zeus; in the canonical Hesiodic version, he was blinded by the gods as the price of his gift. The blindness is the central feature of the Tiresias tradition, and it is the source of the standard modern image of the prophet-seer: the man who sees in his mind’s eye what he cannot see with his eyes, and whose blindness is the price of his insight.
The Origin of the Gift
The canonical story of Tiresias’s gift is in Hesiod’s Melampodia (a lost poem of the Hesiodic corpus, summarised in later sources). According to Hesiod, Tiresias came upon a pair of snakes coupling on Mount Cyllene, in Arcadia, and he struck them with his staff. The act of striking the snakes transformed him into a woman, and he remained a woman for seven years, until he came upon another pair of snakes and struck them, and was transformed back into a man. The double transformation gave him a unique authority in a dispute between Zeus and Hera, who could not agree on whether men or women had more pleasure in the act of love. Tiresias, who had been both man and woman, was called to adjudicate, and he answered that women had nine parts of pleasure and men only one. Hera, angry at the answer, struck him blind. Zeus, to compensate, gave him the gift of prophecy and a life of seven generations.
The story is one of the central Greek myths of the transformer — the figure who crosses the boundary between human and animal, male and female, divine and mortal. Tiresias’s transformation is not a punishment but a gift, and his blindness is the price of the gift. The Greek tradition was rigorous about this: the gift of prophecy was not free, and the prophet was always marked. Tiresias’s blindness is the standard Greek image of the cost of prophecy, and the modern reading of the figure — the blind poet, the blind prophet, the man who sees in the dark — is the inheritance of the Hesiodic version.
Tiresias in Thebes
In the Theban cycle, Tiresias is the prophet of the Labdacid house, the blind seer who advises the royal family of Thebes. He appears in the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, where he is summoned by Oedipus to explain the cause of the plague on Thebes. Tiresias refuses to speak, and Oedipus accuses him of being part of the plot. Tiresias finally relents and tells Oedipus the truth: Oedipus himself is the killer of Laius, and he is the one who has brought the plague on the city. The exchange is in Greek tragedy, and the chorus’s commentary on it — “the wise blind man” — is the standard Greek image of the prophet.
Tiresias appears also in the Antigone, in the Oedipus at Colonus, in the Philoctetes, and in the Ajax of Sophocles. In the Antigone, he is summoned by Creon to advise on the burial of Polynices, and he warns Creon that the gods are angry and that the burial must be performed. Creon refuses, and the tragedy follows. In the Oedipus at Colonus, Tiresias is the one who guides the old Oedipus to the sacred grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, and the old prophet’s blessing is the source of the peace that the city will know after his death.
Tiresias dies in the Oedipus at Colonus, in the same year as the plague of Thebes. The location of his tomb was a matter of dispute, with the Megarian tradition placing it near Megara, the Theban tradition placing it near Thebes, and the Attic tradition placing it on the Areopagus in Athens. The Areopagus tradition was especially important in the classical period, and the Tiresias tomb on the Areopagus was a place of refuge, like the Theseion.
Tiresias in the Odyssey
Tiresias appears in the Odyssey, in Book XI, as the soul Odysseus must consult in the underworld. He is the only soul who retains his noos (his mind, his faculty of judgment) after drinking of the blood of the sacrificial sheep. The other souls must drink to have any sense; Tiresias does not need to drink, and the seer is the only soul in the Odyssey who can speak prophetically from his own authority. The other souls — his mother Anticleia, the heroes of the past, even Achilles — speak from the knowledge of their previous lives, not from prophecy. Tiresias alone speaks from the gift of prophecy.
The scene in the Odyssey is in Greek literature. Odysseus holds the sheep over the pit, and the souls of the dead swarm up to drink. He draws his sword and holds them off until Tiresias has drunk and prophesied. Tiresias tells Odysseus what he must do to return home: he must not eat the cattle of the sun, and he must make the appropriate sacrifices when he gets home. The rest of the prophecy — the death of Odysseus by the hand of Telegonus, the Telegony story — is not in the Odyssey and is the addition of the later Epic Cycle. The Homeric Tiresias is the one who gives Odysseus the simple practical guidance that will allow him to return to Ithaca.
Tiresias in the Latin Poets
Tiresias is one of the most frequently cited figures in the Latin poets. Ovid makes him the central character of the Metamorphoses Book III, where he is summoned by Juno to adjudicate the dispute between Jupiter and Juno over the relative pleasures of men and women, and where his answer (Juno, the goddess of marriage, is humiliated) is the source of his blindness. The story is the Latin version of the Hesiodic story, and it is the source of the most-read modern treatment of the figure.
Ovid also makes Tiresias the central figure of the Fasti Book II, where he is summoned to predict the future of the city. The prophecy is the standard Roman model: Tiresias predicts the rise of the Julians, the founding of the Empire, and the apotheosis of Augustus. The Fasti version is the Roman appropriation of the Greek prophet, and the prophecy of the Fasti is the source of the most-read Roman version of Tiresias.
In Lucan’s Pharsalia (first century CE), Tiresias is summoned by Sextus Pompey to predict the outcome of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, and his answer is the bleakest of all the Tiresias prophecies: there will be no winner, and the war will end in the destruction of the Roman constitution. The Lucanic Tiresias is the source of the standard modern image of the prophet as the bearer of bad news that the hearer cannot accept.
Tiresias in Dante
Tiresias appears in Dante’s Inferno, in Canto XX, as one of the souls in the fourth bolgia of the eighth circle, the bolgia of the soothsayers, who are punished by being forced to walk backwards, their heads twisted around, with tears running down their backs. The sin of the soothsayers, in Dante’s scheme, is that they tried to see too far ahead, and the punishment is the inversion of the direction of the gaze. Tiresias is one of the named soothsayers — alongside Amphiaraus, Manto, and others — and the description of him is one of the great set-pieces of the Inferno:
The other was Tiresias, who of all Thebes’ seers was the most renowned, and he Of all the seven of that name was the best.
The Dante Tiresias is the most influential single image of the figure in the medieval tradition, and the image of the prophet walking backwards is the source of the standard modern interpretation of the soothsayer as the man who is unable to look forward.
Tiresias in T.S. Eliot
Tiresias appears in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) as the central figure of the poem, the all-seeing but blind prophet who sees the whole of the modern waste land from the inside. The famous epigraph to the poem — “I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker” — is attributed to Tiresias, and the central passage of the poem (lines 218–256) is Tiresias’s own speech, in which he describes his experience as the dual-natured man who has been both man and woman. The Eliot Tiresias is the most influential single image of the figure in twentieth-century literature, and the Waste Land is the source of the most-read modern treatment.
A Note on Reading the Myth
Tiresias is the most useful figure in the Greek tradition for thinking about the cost of knowledge. The Greek tradition was not naive about prophecy: the gift of prophecy was the gift of seeing the future, and the seeing was the cost. Tiresias is the standard Greek image of the cost: the man who sees in his mind’s eye what he cannot see with his eyes, and whose blindness is the price of his insight. The modern reading of the figure — the blind poet, the blind prophet, the man who sees in the dark — is the inheritance of the Greek reading, and the Greek reading is the inheritance of the Hesiodic version. The Tiresias story is one of the great images of the Western tradition, and the modern reader who has not read Hesiod or Sophocles or Dante has still encountered the figure.
For more, see the Oedipus story, the Odysseus profile, the Hades profile, and the Homer page.