Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Tiresias, son of Everes and the nymph Chariclo, saw two snakes mating on Cyllene (or elsewhere in Arcadia/Bootia) and wounded or killed them; he was changed into a woman. After living as a woman for seven (or eight) years—and in some tellings serving as a priestess or marrying—he again saw snakes mating, did as before (or as instructed), and was restored to manhood. Zeus and Hera, quarreling whether men or women take greater pleasure in sex, summoned Tiresias as one who had known both. He answered that woman’s pleasure is nine times greater (or greater in the Hesiodic ratio). Hera, angered, blinded him; Zeus, in recompense, granted him prophetic sight and a long life spanning seven generations. So Apollodorus and the Hesiodic *Melampodia*. A competing classical version (Callimachus): the young Tiresias sees Athena bathing; the goddess blinds him; at Chariclo’s plea she gives him inward vision and a staff. Catalogue the **snake–gender–verdict** line as the main Apollodorean handbook myth; mark the Athena bath as an alternate aetiology of the same blindness and mantic gift. Tiresias becomes the Theban seer of the Oedipus and Seven cycles—blind to light, sighted in fate.