Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tiresias
TIRESIAS, a famous Theban seer of Greek legend, was a son of Everes and Chariclo, and a descendant of Udaeus, one of the men who had sprung up from the serpent's teeth sown by Cadmus. He was blind, for which various causes were alleged. Some said that the gods had blinded him because he had revealed to men what they ought not to know. Others said that Athene (or Artemis) blinded him because he had seen her naked; when his mother prayed Athene to restore his sight, the goddess instead purged his ears so that he could understand the speech of birds and gave him a staff wherewith to guide his steps. Another story was that on Mount Cyllene (or on Cythaerurn) he saw two snakes coupling; he killed the female and became himself a woman. Seven years afterwards he saw the same sight, and killing the male became himself a man again. When Zeus and Hera disputed whether more pleasure was enjoyed by the male or the female sex, they referred the question to Tiresias, as he had experience of both. He decided in favour of the female sex, and Hera in her anger blinded him; but Zeus gifted him with long life and infallible divination. He lived for seven or, according to others, nine generations. In the war of the Seven against Thebes he foretold to the Thebans that they would be victorious if Menceceus offered himself in sacrifice. In the war of the Epigoni he advised the Thebans to flee. They fled, and he with them; but coming to the Tilphusian well he drank of it and died. According to others, Tiresias was taken prisoner by the victorious Argives and died while they were taking him to Delphi. The Argives took his daughter Manto (or Daphne) prisoner and sent her to Apollo at Delphi, where, being as skilled a seer as her father, she gave oracles. A different version of the legend of Tiresias was given by the elegiac poet Sostratus (reported by Eustathius on Od., x. 492). According to him, Tiresias was originally a girl, but had been changed into a boy by Apollo at the age of seven; after undergoing several more transformations from one sex to the other, she (for the final sex was feminine) was turned into a mouse and her lover Arachnus into a weasel. Tiresias's grave was at the Tilphusian spring; but there was a cenotaph of him at Thebes, where also in later times his "observatory," or place for watching for omens, was pointed out. He had an oracle at Orchomenus, but during a plague it became silent and remained so in Plutarch's time. According to Homer, Tiresias was the only person in the world of the dead whom Proserpine allowed to retain intelligence. He figured in the great paintings by Polygnotus in the Lesche at Delphi. The story of his transformation into a woman is perhaps to be explained by the custom of medicine-men dressing like women, which prevails in Borneo, Patagonia, Kadiak (off Alaska), and probably elsewhere.[1]
- ↑ On this custom see Journals of James Brooke of Sarawak, ii. p. 65 sq.; H. Low, Sarawak, p. 175 sq.; Perelaer, Ethnogr. Beschrijving der Dajaks, p. 32 sq.; Carl Bock, Head Hunters of Borneo, p. 222 n.; Falkner, Description of Patagonia, p. 117; Trans. Ethnolog. Soc. Lond., new series, vii. p. 323; Holmberg, "Ethnogr. Skizzen," in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ, iv. p. 400 sq.