Tiresias

Afterwards, as told by Phlegon, god of prophecy Apollo informed Tiresias: if she spots copulating snakes and similarly harms them, she will return to her previous form.

[note 3][4][5][3][6] According to Eustathius, Tiresias was originally a woman who promised Apollo her favours in exchange for musical lessons, only to reject him afterwards.

While Pherecydes and Callimachus' fifth hymn, The Baths of Pallas, provided a different story—"the youthful Tiresias" was blinded by Athena after he came to sate his thirst at the bubbling spring, where Athena and her favourite attendant, the nymph Chariclo (mother of Tiresias) were enjoying a "cool plunge in the fair-flowing spring of Hippocrene on Mount Helicon".

Instead, Athena "cleansed his ears", giving him the ability to understand birdsong (gift of augury), and granted him a staff of cornel-wood, "wherewith he walked like those who see".

To give Tiresias solace in his grief, Athena "promised to bestow on him the gifts of prophecy and divination, long life, and after death the retention of his mental powers undimmed" by the underworld.

[8][note 5] On another account behind Tiresias' blindness and his gift,[note 6] he was drawn into an argument between goddess Hera and her husband Zeus, arguing whether "the pleasures of love are felt more by women or by men", with Hera taking the side of men, Zeus putting himself in opposition, and Tiresias making the final judgement as someone who had experienced both pleasures.

Hera struck him blind, but Zeus, in recompense, gave Tiresias the gift of foresight[note 7] and a lifespan of "seven ordinary lives".

Sometimes he would receive visions, listen for the songs of birds, or burn offerings or entrails, interpreting prophecies through pictures that appeared in the smoke.

[13][14] As claimed by Pausanias, the tomb of Tiresias was "ordinarily pointed out in the vicinity" of the Tilphusan Well near Thebes, Greece, while Pliny the Elder wrote that his burial site was located in Macedonia, marked with a monument.

Pietro della Vecchia , Tiresias transformed into a woman , 17th century.
Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera. Engraving by Johann Ulrich Kraus c. 1690. Taken from Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid).
Tiresias appears to Odysseus during the nekyia of Odyssey Book XI, in this watercolor with tempera by the Anglo-Swiss Johann Heinrich Füssli , c. 1780–85.