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In Greek mythology, Tiresias (; , ''Teiresias'') was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo.〔Of a line born of the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus (''Bibliotheke'', III.6.7); see also Hyginus, ''Fabula'' 75.〕 Tiresias participated fully in seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself. ==Overview== Eighteen allusions to mythic Tiresias, noted by Luc Brisson,〔Luc Brisson, 1976. ''Le mythe de Tirésias: essai d'analyse structurale'' (Leiden: Brill).〕 fall into three groups: one, in two episodes, recounts Tiresias' 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 Tiresias. How Tiresias 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. On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese,〔Eustathius and John Tzetzes place this episode on Mount Cithaeron in Boeotia, near the territory of Thebes.〕 as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair a smart blow with his stick. Hera was not pleased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias 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 Tiresias was a prostitute of great renown. After seven years as a woman, Tiresias 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.〔''Hygini Fabulae'', LXXV〕 As a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. This ancient story is recorded in lost lines of Hesiod.〔According to ''Bibliotheke'' III.6.7, and in Phlegon, ''Mirabilia'' 4.〕 In Hellenistic and Roman times Tiresias' 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 of Phanagoria's lost elegiac ''Tiresias''.〔Eustathius, ''Commentary on Homer's Odyssey'' 10.494.〕 Tiresias is presented as a complexly liminal 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.〔Fully explored in structuralist mode, with many analogies drawn from ambivalent sexualities considered to exist among animals in Antiquity, in Brisson 1976.〕 According to the mythographic compendium ''Bibliotheke'',〔''Bibliotheke'' III.6.7.〕 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, Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked.〔This, readable as a doublet of the Actaeon mytheme, was the version preferred by the English poets Tennyson and even Swinburne.〕 His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged Athena to undo her curse, but the goddess could not; instead, she cleaned his ears,〔 giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury. In a separate episode,〔The episode is briefly noted by Hyginus, ''Fabula'' 75; Ovid treats it at length in ''Metamorposes'' III.〕 Tiresias 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 Tiresias had experienced both. Tiresias replied, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only."〔''Bibliotheke'' III.6.7.〕 Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. Zeus could do nothing to stop her or reverse her curse, but in recompense he did give Tiresias the gift of foresight〔The blind prophet with inner sight as recompense for blindness, is a familiar mytheme.〕 and a lifespan of seven lives. He is said to have understood the language of birds and could divine the future from indications in fire, or smoke. However it was the communications of the dead he relied the most on, menacing them when they were late to attend him. Tiresias makes a dramatic appearance in the ''Odyssey'', book XI, in which Odysseus calls up the spirits of the dead (the ''nekyia''). "So sentient is Tiresias, even in death," observes Marina Warner "that he comes up to Odysseus and recognizes him and calls him by name before he has drunk the black blood of the sacrifice; even Odysseus' own mother cannot accomplish this, but must drink deep before her ghost can see her son for himself ()."〔Warner, Marina. ''Monuments and Maidens: the allegory of the female form''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. p. 329〕 As a seer, "Tiresias" was "a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history" (Graves 1960, 105.5). In Greek literature, Tiresias's pronouncements are always given in short maxims which are often cryptic (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 Tiresias with the myth: thus it is Tiresias 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 (''see below''). Like most oracles, he is generally extremely reluctant to offer the whole of what he sees in his visions. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tiresias」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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