Tiresias
A blind seer of Thebes, Tiresias acquired his gift of prophecy by accident. As a youth he saw two snakes coupling; upon striking the female dead, he found himself changed into a woman. Years later he performed the same deed and was changed back to a man. Because of his experience in both roles, Zeus and Hera commanded him to settle their dispute over which sex derived more pleasure from lovemaking. Tiresias declared that it was the woman by nine to one. Infuriated, Hera struck him blind, but Zeus rewarded him with the power of prophecy. Callimachus gave a different account, according to which Athena blinded Tiresias after he caught sight of her bathing but in compensation also gave him the gifts of prophecy and long life.
      Tiresias was said to have lived through seven generations. He unsuccessfully urged Pentheus not to oppose Dionysus. When a plague gripped Thebes during the reign of Oedipus, Tiresias revealed its cause: Oedipus’s patricide and marriage to his own mother. When the Seven against Thebes besieged the city, Tiresias advised that Creon’s son be sacrificed to ensure a Theban victory. Ten years later, when the Epigoni (sons of the Seven against Thebes) assaulted the city, Tiresias prophesied the fall of Thebes and urged the citizens to flee. Either joining the exodus or remaining behind because he had foreknowledge of his own death, Tiresias died while drinking from a spring. In Hades, he counseled Odysseus on how to return to Ithaca.
      
       Classical Sources. Homer, Odyssey io.487ff, 11.84-151. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 293-454; Antigone 952—1055. Euripides, The Phoenician Maidens 834—959; The Bacchae 170— 372. Callimachus, Hymns, “The Bath of Pallas.” Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.316-50. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 2.4.8, 3.4.1, 3.6.7, 3.7.3—4. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.33.1-2. Hy-ginus, Fabulae 67, 68, 75, 125, 128. Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead 9, “Menippus and Tiresias.”
      
       See also Antigone; Odysseus, in Hades; Oedipus; Pentheus; Seven against Thebes.