Teiresias

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Odysseus (center), accompanied by Eurylochus and Perimedes, meets Teiresias (head below left) in the underworld; Depiction of the scene from the 11th song of the Odyssey.

Tiresias ( Greek  Τειρεσίας , Latin Tiresias ) is in Greek mythology, a blind prophet , the son of the shepherd Eueres and the nymph Chariklo , of the family of the divisions Udaios.

myth

In the ancient tradition since Homer , Teiresias is regarded as the seer par excellence. Several explanations are given in mythology for his blindness. After numerous stories, little deviating in detail, he came across a pair of mating snakes on Mount Kyllene or on Kithairon and killed the female. He was then turned into a woman. Teiresias, now a woman, married and had children, including Manto , who was also endowed with the gift of vision , through whom he became the grandfather of the seer Mopsus . After seven years, Teiresias met a pair of copulating snakes again, this time killing the male and becoming male again.

According to a tradition assigned by Pseudo-Apollodorus to Hesiod , Teiresias was asked by Zeus and Hera to clarify the issue of whether a man or woman felt more pleasure in sexual love - Zeus had chosen women, Hera for men. Having experienced life both as a man and as a woman, he supported Zeus' opinion and revealed that out of ten parts of lust, men enjoy only one and women nine. For this reason the angry Hera made Teiresias blind. Since Zeus could not undo this, he gave Teiresias the gift of the seer and seven times the life span as compensation . This narrative thread was widespread in antiquity, can be found, for example, in Ovid , Hyginus , Lukian or Phlegon von Tralleis and was also handed down in Scholien from late to post-antiquity up to Johannes Tzetzes in the 12th century , whereby the pleasure relationship sometimes favors the men postponed.

According to another version of the myth, Athena made young Teiresias blind after seeing the goddess - albeit against his will - naked in the bathroom. His mother Chariklo asked Athena to undo this, but she was unable to. Instead, it gave him the gift of understanding the language of birds, which made him an augur , gave him the gift of vision and, as a special benefit, the ability to remain conscious even after his death in the underworld .

In an older and simpler tradition, the reason given for blindness is that he betrayed the secrets of the immortal gods to people. For this he was blinded as a punishment , which his visionary gift presupposes as given. In this context she was presumably inherited from his mother's nymph nature.

As a seer, Teiresias was considered infallible. In Greek literature, his prophecies are always sayings, but never false. However, he is reluctant to reveal them. In the tragedy Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus (467 BC) Megareus kills himself because of Teiresias' prediction that the voluntary death of a Theban would save Thebes.

From pseudo- Hesiod it can be concluded that Teiresias was considered a priest of Zeus . This is clearly stated by Pindar later in his first Nemean Ode , and a papyrus fragment that deals with the death of Teiresias and mentions that Zeus had withdrawn the vision of his protégé Teiresias, points in this direction. The Lille papyrus and Teiresias appearances in the tragedy, on the other hand, suggest a closeness to Apollo .

In two pieces of the Theban trilogy about King Oedipus , which Sophocles probably 442 BC. Brought to its first performance, Teiresias also appears. First in their first tragedy, Antigone . King Creon of Thebes refuses the funeral of Oedipus' son Polynices . His sister Antigone secretly buries him, is caught and - although Creon's future daughter-in-law - is sentenced to be buried alive. The gods express their disapproval of this through Teiresias. In the meantime, Antigone hangs himself. When Creon arrives at her coffin, he is attacked by his son Haimon , who then kills himself. When Eurydice , Creon's wife, learns of the death of the two, she also takes her own life. In King Oedipus, the second part of the trilogy, Oedipus asks Teiresias to help him with his research into the murderer of his father Laios . Teiresias refuses to answer directly, instead suggesting that the perpetrator is someone who Oedipus does not wish to find. When Oedipus discovers himself as the perpetrator, he blinds himself and is now wandering around.

Teiresias died after drinking water from the Tilphussa spring . Odysseus visited him in the underworld and received valuable information on the further course of his odyssey , which has gone down in world literature as the Odyssey, in particular on dealing with the flocks of Helios on Thrinakia , even if Odysseus' team did not follow the instructions.

One often reads that Hera blinded Teiresias because he betrayed the secret of women with his statement about lust. This is not in the ancient sources, but is an interpretation of the myth that can be traced back to Nicole Loraux .

Johann Heinrich Füssli : Teiresias appears to Odysseus in the underworld

Ancient sources

The figure of Teiresias appears in a relatively large number of ancient works. This includes:

Reception in modern times

Teiresias appears several times in the classical works of modern times and in modern literature, both as a prototype of the blind seer and as a figure with sexual ambivalence. Teiresias appears in Dante's Divine Comedy , in the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton , he is a main character in the modernist poem The Desolate Land by TS Eliot .

Teiresias is the title of the comic opera Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Teiresias) by Francis Poulenc , which is based on a text by the surrealist Guillaume Apollinaire . Teiresias also finds musical mention in the album Dream, Tiresias! of the German band Project Pitchfork . The Genesis group's play The Cinema Show also speaks of Teiresias's bisexuality .

In the film, Teiresias was played by Christopher Lee in The Adventures of Odysseus and Kim Coates in Hercules .

literature

  • Luc Brisson : Le mythe de Tirésias. Essai d'analysis structurale . Brill, Leiden 1976, ISBN 90-04-04569-4 .
  • Karl Buslepp : Teiresias . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 5, Leipzig 1924, Sp. 178-207 ( digitized version ).
  • Emilia Di Rocco: Io Tiresia. Metamorfosi di un profeta . Riuniti, Roma 2007, ISBN 978-88-359-5989-2 .
  • Bernhard Gallistl: Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides . Dissertation Zurich 1979
  • Nicole Loraux : The Experiences of Tiresias. The Feminine and the Greek Man . University Press, Princeton, NJ 1995, ISBN 0-691-02985-7 .
  • Gherardo Ugolini: Teiresias. Investigations into the figure of the seer Teiresias in mythical traditions and in tragedy. G. Narr, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-8233-4871-X
  • Gherardo Ugolini: Tiresia ei sovrani di Tebe: il topos del litigio . In: Materiali e Discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici. 27: 9-36 (1991).
  • Gherardo Ugolini: Le metamorfosi di Tiresia tra cultura classica e moderna . In: G. Ugolini (ed.): The power of the past. Myth and Reality of Classical Culture. Olms, Hildesheim 2005, pp. 169-179.

Web links

Commons : Teiresias  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hesiod in the library of Apollodor 3,6,7 online .
  2. ↑ Bibliotheke of Apollodor 3,6,7.
  3. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 3,316–338.
  4. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 75.
  5. ↑ Lukian, Talks with the Dead 28
  6. ↑ Phlegon, Mirabilia 37.
  7. ↑ A compilation of the passages in Gherardo Ugolini: Teiresias. Investigations into the figure of the seer Teiresias in mythical traditions and in tragedy. G. Narr, Tübingen 1995, pp. 39-49.
  8. ↑ This statement by the Pherekydes follows Callimachus in his hymn The bath of Pallas ( hymns from 5.77 to 136 online ).
  9. ↑ Bibliotheke of Apollodor 3,6,7.
  10. ↑ So Karl Buslepp : Tiresias . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 5, Leipzig 1924, column 183 ( digitized version ).
  11. ↑ Ps.-Hesiod fr. 211 f. (= Reinhold Merkelbach , Martin L. West (ed.): Fragmenta Hesiodea. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1967, fr. 275f.).
  12. ^ Pindar, Nemeische Oden 1.60.
  13. ^ So Hugh Lloyd-Jones : Review of Vittorio Bartoletti (Ed.): Papiri greci e latini. Volume 14. In: Gnomon . Volume 31, Issue 2, 1959, pp. 109-114, here p. 113 f. to No. 1398; Gherardo Ugolini joins him cautiously: Teiresias. Investigations into the figure of the seer Teiresias in mythical traditions and in tragedy. Narr, Tübingen 1995, p. 38 note 8.
  14. ^ Peter J. Parsons : The Lille 'Stesichorus'. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 26, 1977, pp. 7-36.
  15. ↑ z. B. Sophocles , King Oedipus 285. 375 f .; see also Gherardo Ugolini: Teiresias. Investigations into the figure of the seer Teiresias in mythical traditions and in tragedy. Narr, Tübingen 1995, p. 190 f.
  16. ↑ Libraries of Apollodor 3,7,3 online
  17. ↑ Nicole Loraux : Les expériences de Tirésias. Le féminin et l'homme grec. Paris 1989. On the statement that this is a modern interpretation that is not directly supported by the sources, see Gherardo Ugolini: Teiresias. Investigations into the figure of the seer Teiresias in mythical traditions and in tragedy. Narr, Tübingen 1995, p. 60 f.