Tiresias

Family: Theban · Role: seer and umpire · First appears: Fable 34

Life events

• Tiresias changes from man to woman, then regains his original sex.(Fable34)
  • “For he had separated with a blow of his staff two bodies of large serpents, as they were coupling in a green wood; and (passing strange) become a woman from a man, he had spent seven autumns.”
• Tiresias confirms Jupiter’s claim that female pleasure is greater.(Fable34)
  • With: Jupiter Juno
  • “He, therefore, being chosen as umpire in this sportive contest, confirmed the words of Jove.”
• Juno condemns Tiresias to eternal blindness after his judgment.(Fable34)
  • With: Juno
  • “The daughter of Saturn is said to have grieved more than was fit, and not in proportion to the subject; and she condemned the eyes of the umpire to eternal darkness.”
• Jupiter grants Tiresias prophetic knowledge to compensate for his blindness.(Fable34)
  • With: Jupiter
  • “But the omnipotent father (for it is not allowed any God to cancel the acts of {another} Deity) gave him the knowledge of things to come, in recompense for his loss of sight”
• Tiresias predicts Bacchus’s arrival and Pentheus’s violent death for refusing divine honors.(Fable37)
  • With: Pentheus Bacchus Semele Agave Autonoë
  • “For soon the day will come, and even now I predict that it is not far off, when the new {God} Liber, the son of Semele, shall come hither. Unless thou shalt vouchsafe him the honor of a temple, thou shalt be scattered, torn in pieces, in a thousand places, and with thy blood thou shalt pollute both the woods, and thy mother and the sisters of thy mother.”

Fable 34

• with Jupiter (Jupiter compensates Tiresias for the loss of his sight.) “But the omnipotent father (for it is not allowed any God to cancel the acts of {another} Deity) gave him the knowledge of things to come, in recompense for his loss of sight, and alleviated his punishment by this honor.”
• with Juno (Juno punishes Tiresias by blinding him.) “The daughter of Saturn is said to have grieved more than was fit, and not in proportion to the subject; and she condemned the eyes of the umpire to eternal darkness.”

Fable 37

• enemies with Pentheus “Yet Pentheus,[79] the son of Echion, a contemner of the Gods above, alone, of all men, despises him, and derides the predicting words of the old man, and upbraids him with his darkened state, and the misfortune of {having lost} his sight.”

Fable 56

• child: Manto “For Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, foreknowing the future, urged by a divine impulse, had proclaimed through the middle of the streets”

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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.