Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes

Tiresias is the blind seer of Thebes and the most famous prophet in Greek mythology. Struck blind by a god but given the power to see the future in exchange, he lives through several generations of Theban history, from Cadmus to the Epigoni, and is the only one of the dead who keeps his full intelligence in the underworld. Whatever the story, his job is the same: to tell kings the truth they do not want to hear. He does it with Oedipus, with Creon and with Pentheus — and each time he is believed too late.

A Theban of the Sown Men

Through his father Everes, Tiresias descends from Udaeus, one of the Spartoi — the warriors who sprang from the dragon’s teeth that Cadmus sowed when he founded Thebes (Apollodorus 3.6.7). His mother is the nymph Chariclo, a close companion of Athena. He therefore belongs to the city’s oldest aristocracy, which partly explains the authority he carries in front of its kings.

He is also granted an extraordinary lifespan — seven generations, according to the Melampodia and Apollodorus. That lets poets place him at every stage of Theban history: he foretells the destiny of Heracles to Amphitryon, husband of Alcmene (Pindar, Nemean 1.60-72), advises the aged Cadmus about Dionysus, confronts Oedipus, warns Creon, and dies when the city finally falls.

Two stories of his blindness

Athena at her bath

In Callimachus’ fifth Hymn, the young Tiresias, out hunting on Mount Helicon, comes to the spring of Hippocrene just as Athena is bathing there with Chariclo. He sees the goddess naked and loses his sight on the spot. This is not revenge, Athena explains, but an ancient law of Cronus: any mortal who sees an immortal against the god’s will pays a heavy price. To console Chariclo, the goddess gives her son the understanding of birds, a staff to guide his steps, a long life and, after death, a mind that stays intact (57-136).

Umpire between Zeus and Hera

The other story is older — it goes back to the Melampodia attributed to Hesiod — and much stranger. On Mount Cyllene, Tiresias sees two snakes mating and strikes them: he becomes a woman. Seven years later he comes upon the snakes again, strikes them again, and turns back into a man. When Zeus and Hera quarrel over whether men or women enjoy love more, they ask him, since he has known both. His answer — nine parts in ten to the woman — enrages Hera, who blinds him; Zeus, unable to undo another god’s act, gives him prophecy and seven lifetimes (Apollodorus 3.6.7; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.316-338).

Both versions agree on the essentials: blindness and prophecy come together. The man who can no longer see the visible world sees what everyone else misses — exactly the paradox that tragedy would exploit.

The seer of Theban tragedy

Against Oedipus

In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Tiresias is summoned to name the killer of Laius. He refuses to speak, then, goaded by the king’s insults, tells him the truth: Oedipus himself is the murderer he is hunting. Oedipus accuses him of conspiring with Creon, the brother of Jocasta, and the seer throws the insult back: the king has eyes and cannot see his own ruin (300-462). The whole play turns on that reversal — the blind man who sees against the clear-eyed ruler who will end by blinding himself.

Against Creon

In Antigone, Tiresias comes to warn Creon that the altars of Thebes are polluted by the flesh of the unburied Polynices. Creon accuses him of taking bribes; Tiresias answers with the prophecy that Creon will pay “a corpse for a corpse” from his own family. Creon gives way, but too late: Antigone has already hanged herself, and his son Haemon dies over her body (988-1090).

Against Pentheus

In Euripides’ Bacchae, the old seer dresses as a Bacchant alongside Cadmus to dance for Dionysus and tries to persuade the young king Pentheus to accept the new god (170-369). Pentheus refuses and is torn apart by the Maenads. In The Phoenician Women, Tiresias demands that Creon sacrifice his son Menoeceus to save the city from the Seven (834-1018).

The only dead man who keeps his wits

Tiresias’ earliest appearance, however, is in the Odyssey. Circe tells Odysseus that he must go down to the dead to consult “Theban Tiresias, the blind seer, whose mind is unshaken”: Persephone has left him his understanding, while the other shades flit about senseless (10.487-495). In book 11, after drinking the blood of the sacrifice, Tiresias warns of Poseidon’s anger and the cattle of the Sun, foretells the suitors, and prescribes a last journey inland with an oar on Odysseus’ shoulder until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan; then a gentle death “from the sea” — or “far from the sea”, depending on how the Greek is read (11.90-151).

Ovid also gives him the first prophecy of his career, about the infant Narcissus: the boy will live long “if he does not come to know himself” (Metamorphoses 3.346-348). The line turns Delphi’s “know thyself” on its head and makes the seer’s reputation.

Death, cult and descendants

When the Epigoni, sons of the Seven, capture Thebes, Tiresias advises the Thebans to abandon the city by night. On the road he drinks from the spring of Tilphusa in Boeotia and dies (Apollodorus 3.7.3). Pausanias saw his tomb there (9.33.1) and was shown in Thebes the “bird observatory of Tiresias” (9.16.1). Plutarch mentions an oracle of Tiresias at Orchomenus that fell silent after a plague (On the Obsolescence of Oracles 434c).

His daughter Manto, a prophetess herself, was sent to Delphi as spoils of war and later founded, with Rhacius, the oracle of Apollo at Claros in Asia Minor; she was the mother of the seer Mopsus (Pausanias 7.3.1-2).

Legacy

Tiresias has become a universal figure of helpless insight and of double experience. T. S. Eliot made him the central voice of The Waste Land; Apollinaire titled his surrealist play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917), later set as an opera by Poulenc. Gender studies and psychoanalysis return again and again to his answer in the quarrel of Zeus and Hera.

Further reading

For the journey to the dead and the prophecy to Odysseus, read our summary of the Odyssey. For his prediction about the infant Narcissus, see the myth of Narcissus. For the rulers he confronts at Thebes, continue with Oedipus, Jocasta, Antigone and Cadmus. For the two goddesses tied to his blindness, read Athena and Hera.