In Teaching the Language in Drama class, we encounter a story on king Oedipus. While doing the analysis of the story, Dr Edwin asked us to find out about Teiresias, a blind prophet. There a lot of myths related to Teiresias, therefore I combined all together and come up with this compilation of story on Teiresias. I hope this will help my friends and those who are interested in knowing about Teiresias.
Eighteen allusions to mythic Teiresias, noted by Luc Brisson, fall into three groups: one, in two episodes, recounts Teiresias' sex-change and his encounter with Zeus and Hera; a second group recounts his blinding by Athena; a third, all but lost, seems to have recounted the misadventures of Teiresias.
Teiresias was a prophet of Zeus. According to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke, 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 alternate story told by the poet Pherecydes was followed in Callimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas"; in it, Teiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged her to undo her curse, but Athena could not; instead, she cleaned his ears, giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury.
On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese, as Teiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair a smart blow with his stick. Hera was not pleased, and she punished Teiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Teiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. According to some versions of the tale, Lady Teiresias was a prostitute of great renown. After seven years as a woman, Teiresias again found mating snakes; depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according to Hyginus, trampled on them. As a result, Teiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. This ancient story is recorded in lost lines of Hesiod.
In a separate episode, Teiresias was drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed; or, as Zeus claimed, the woman, as Teiresias had experienced both. Teiresias revealed woman's greatest secret: that she receives the greater pleasure: "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only." Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. Zeus could do nothing to stop her, but he did give Teiresias the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven lives.
Stripped of its narrative, anecdotal and causal connections, the mythic figure of Teiresias combines several archaic elements: the blind seer; the impious interruption of a natural rite (whether of a bathing goddess or coupling serpents); serpents and staff (Caduceus); a holy man's double gender (shaman); and competition between deities.
Teiresias's background, fully male and then fully female, was important, both for his prophecy and his experiences. Also, prophecy was a gift given only to the priests and priestesses. Therefore, Teiresias offered Zeus and Hera evidence and gained the gift of male and female priestly prophecy. How he obtained his information varied: sometimes, like the oracles, 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, and so interpret them.
As a seer, "Teiresias" was "a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history". In Greek literature, Teiresias's pronouncements are always 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 Teiresias with the myth: thus it is Teiresias who tells Amphytrion 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.
In Hellenistic and Roman times Teiresias' sex-change was embroidered upon and expanded into seven episodes, with appropriate amours in each, probably written by the Alexandrian Ptolemaeus Chennus, but attributed by Eustathius to Sostratus. Teiresias is presented as a complexly luminal figure, with a foot in each of many oppositions, mediating between the gods and mankind, male and female, blind and seeing, present and future, and this world and the Underworld.
Teiresias appears as the name of a recurring character in several stories and Greek tragedies concerning the legendary history of Thebes. In The Bacchae, by Euripides, Teiresias appears with Cadmus, the founder and first king of Thebes, to warn the current king Pentheus against denouncing Dionysus as a god. Along with Cadmus, he dresses in women's clothing to go up the mountain to worship Dionysus with the Theban women.
In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, calls upon Teiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king Laius. At first, Teiresias 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 Teiresias had 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.
Oedipus had handed over the rule of Thebes to his sons Eteocles and Polynices but Eteocles refused to share the throne with his brother. Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes recounts the story of the war which followed. In it, Eteocles and Polynices kill each other, and Megareus kills himself because of Teiresias' prophecy that a voluntary death from a Theban would save the city.
Teiresias 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 Teiresias. However, Antigone has already hanged herself rather than be buried alive. When Creon arrives at the tomb where she is to be interred, his son, Haemon who was betrothed to Antigone, attacks Creon and then kills himself. When Creon's wife, Eurydice, is informed of her son and Antigone's deaths, she too takes her own life.
Teiresias and his prophesy are also involved in the story of the Epigoni. Teiresias died after drinking the water from the spring Tilphussa, where he was struck by an arrow of Apollo. After his death he was visited in the underworld by Odysseus, to whom he gave valuable advice concerning the rest of his voyage, specifically concerning the cattle of Helios, advice which Odysseus' men did not follow, to their peril.
