Manto, Daughter of Tiresias

Catalogue ID: 05-local-and-lesser/070-manto-daughter-tiresias

Cycle: Local and lesser — Theban / prophetic lineage; colonial aetiology

Version line: Apollodorean / tragic / Pausanian

Sources: Apollodorus, *Library* 3.7.4, 3.7.7; Pausanias 7.3.1–2, 9.10.3, 9.33.2; Diodorus 4.66; Euripides, *Phoenician Women* (Manto named in Theban context); Strabo 14.5.16 (Clarian Apollo / Mopsus)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/05-local-and-lesser/070-manto-daughter-tiresias.md

Characters

Artemis — receiver of the Theban captive; god of Claros
Circe — father; Theban seer (background)
Epigoni — captors who send her to Delphi
Idmon — son of Manto (by Rhacius or Apollo); later famous seer
Manto — daughter of Tiresias; prophetess; Delphic captive; foundress-figure at Claros
Polynices — in some tales associated with Manto after the Epigoni (variant glance)
Rhacius — Cretan or local husband at Claros in one stemma

Places

Ionia — oracular shrine linked to Manto
Mantua — later eponymous claim (reception only)
Mysia — home; fall; Manto’s seat in local memory
Pytho — dedication of captives; Apollo’s dispatch

Themes

Narrative

Manto (also Daphne in some oracular contexts) was the daughter of Tiresias and herself a prophetess. When the Epigoni took Thebes, she was among the captives dedicated to Apollo at Delphi. From Delphi the god sent her to found or settle a colony: she went to Asia, to the site of Claros, where she established the oracular shrine of Clarian Apollo. There she bore Mopsus to Rhacius (or to Apollo)—Mopsus who later rivaled Calchas in mantic fame. Pausanias also knows Manto in Boeotian memory—a chair or seat of Manto at Thebes—and links her name to Mantua in the Roman genealogical imagination (Greek core remains Claros and the Theban captivity). Through Manto the prophetic craft of Tiresias survives the ruin of Thebes and plants an Ionian oracle. Catalogue her as daughter, war-captive, and colonial foundress of Claros—not merely a name in Tiresias’s household list.