Teiresias the Great

Dr. Edwin asks of us to google Teiresias (one of the characters in Oedipus the King) and read more about him. I found out a lot about him with Wikipedia being my number one source of information as always. Now let me tell you what I’ve learnt about him. Teiresias, as what I knew from “Oedipus the King” is a blind seer also known as a soothsayer. He was not born blind like I thought he was but there are several stories as to how he ended up being blind. The first one was simply because he reveals too many of God’s secrets to the people of Thebes. The second is from poems by Pherecydes and later Callimachus. It is said that Teiresias was blinded by Athena (goddess of wisdom and useful arts and prudent warfare) after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. Athena could not undo the curse but she cleaned his ears to make him understand birdsong (augury). The third story is where Teiresias hit a pair of snakes making love with his stick. Hera (Queen of the Olympian gods) was not pleased, and she punished Teiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Teiresias became Hera’s priestess, married and had children, including Manto (who also possessed the gift of prophecy). 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 trampled on them. As a result, Teiresias was released from his sentence and regain his masculinity. In a separate episode, as Hera and her husband Zeus (The supreme god of ancient Greek mythology) was arguing, he was asked the question “who has more pleasure in sex?”: the man, as Hera claimed; or, the woman, as Zeus claimed, because Teiresias had experienced both. Teiresias revealed that “she” receives the greater pleasure. Insulted, 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.

There are a few works in which Teiresias appeared. He is most famous in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King where he is the one in charge of telling Oedipus about King Laois’ murderer. He refused to tell at first saying that the killer is someone Oedipus really does not wish to find. Oedipus accuses Teiresias of not having the gift of foresight and even accuses him of the murder. Teiresias finally said that Oedipus is “the murderer whom (he) seek”. Oedipus got mad and chases him out of the palace, but then afterwards realises the truth. Other than Oedipus the King, Teiresias also appeared in The Bacchae, by Euripides where he appears with Cadmus (the founder and first king of Thebes) to warn the current king Pentheus against denouncing Dionysus (god of wine and fertility and drama) as a god. On the other hand, Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes recounts the story of the war which followed the quarrel for throne between Oedipus’ two sons Eteocles and Polynices. In it, Eteocles and Polynices kill each other, and Megareus kills himself because Tiresias prophesised that a voluntary death from a Theban would save the city. This shows how much people believed in Teiresias and his ability to see the future. 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. But it was already too late. Antigone hanged herself before she was to be buried alive. Creon on the other hand was attacked by his son, Haemon who was engaged to Antigone and the latter then kills himself. When Creon's wife, Eurydice, is informed of her husband, son and Antigone's deaths, she too takes her own life. This is really awful. All I can understand about tragedy is that it involves a lot of blood spill. Owh, Tiresias and his prophecy are also involved in the story of the Epigoni (I don’t know much about his role in this story though).
Tiresias died after drinking the water from the spring Tilphussa, where Apollo’s arrow struck him. After his death, Odysseus (a famous mythical Greek hero) visited him in the underworld, to whom he gave valuable advice concerning the rest of his voyage, specifically concerning the cattle of Helios (Ancient god of the sun), advice which Odysseus' men did not follow, to their jeopardy.
Tiresias is still remembered by a lot of people mainly poets and fiction writers even after his death. His name and role appeared in a lot of literary works and this shows that he has a really big influence in the literary world. Go, Tiresias!!