Tiresias

English

Alternative forms

  • Teiresias

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek Τειρεσίας (Teiresías).

Proper noun

Tiresias

  1. (Greek mythology) A long-lived blind soothsayer who participated over seven generations in the legendary history of (the Greek city) Thebes, noted also for being transformed into a woman for seven years, so being symbolic of androgyny.
    • 1958, Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, page 35:
      [] somewhere a ship's radio was blaring out the latest jazz-hit to reach Alexandria:
      Old Tiresias / No one half so breezy as, / Half so free and easy as / Old Tiresias.
    • 1997, Nicole Loraux, Paula Wissing (translator), The Experiences of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man, Princeton University Press, →ISBN.
    • 2004, Leonard Shlain, Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, page 255:
      The myth associated with how Tiresias became a hermaphrodite reveals much about relations between the sexes.

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