Tiresias
（
Τειρεσίας). A Theban, was one of the most renowed
soothsayers in all antiquity. He was blind from his seventh year, but lived to a very old age.
The occasion of his blindness and of his prophetic power is variously related. In the war of
the Seven against Thebes he declared that Thebes should be victorious if Menoeceus would
sacrifice himself; and during the war of the Epigoni, when the Thebans had been defeated, he
advised them to commence negotiations of peace, and to avail themselves of the opportunity
that would thus be afforded them to take to flight. He himself fled with them (or, according
to others, he was carried to Delphi as a captive), but on his way he drank from the well of
Tilphusa, and died. Even in the lower world Tiresias was believed to retain the powers of
perception, while the souls of other mortals were mere shades, and there also he continued to
use his golden staff. The blind seer Tiresias acts so prominent a part in the mythical history
of Greece that there is scarcely any event with which he is not connected in some way or
other; and this introduction of the seer in so many occurrences, separated by long intervals
of time, was facilitated by the belief in his long life. (See especially
Oedipus.) Tiresias is the subject of a fine poem by Lord Tennyson
(1885).
