Tiresias

In very general lines, Tiresias (Greek Τειρεσίας; Teiresias) first appears in Homer. He is known as a blind soothsayer of Apollo in Thebes, Boeotia. His father was Everes (Εὐήρης; Eyērēs). His mother, the nymph Chariclo (Χαρικλώ, Chariklō), descends from Udaeus[1], one of the Spartoi men (see section Cadmus in Boeotia and Thebes). The personage appears in numerous ancient texts. Luc Brisson has identified eighteen texts about the seer, from which he attempted to compile three versions of a single myth according to their central theme: the first is about Tiresias’ sex change, the second about his blinding by Athena, and the third, about his other misfortunes (Brisson 1976).

There are, however, other essential mythemes and wordings around this persona. Tiresias lived for at least seven generations in Thebes, beginning as an advisor to Cadmus himself. He was struck blind by Athena after seeing her naked. Chariclo, his mother, was a devotee of Athena. Chariclo begged Athena to give Tiresias his sight back, but the goddess could not undo her curse. Instead, she gave him the gift of prophecy by cleaning his ears so he could hear the birds and giving him a stick to walk as if he had his sight. Others say it was Hera, Zeus’ wife, who blinded him, and Zeus himself, who gave him the talent of prophecy. His change of sex is associated with him separating two copulating snakes. He became a woman for seven years. In Homer, Tiresias drinks blood to get his inspiration[2]. Homer says nothing about sex change. One difficulty in interpreting such multipurpose myths is that each text tells more than one aspect, but no text tells it all (Loraux 1978). The myth is built up. Is there one Tiresias or more? Does the term refer to a specific object, or is it generic? By exiting the supernatural and unintelligible sphere, while paying attention to the names of the heroes (Table 1 and 2), we might get some insight.

Table 1. Semantics of Tiresias (TEIRESIAS).

TEIRESIAS
TEI	stretch, strain, lengthen, aim at, direct towards
TEIR	oppress, distress, weaken, rub hard, wear away
EIR	say, vomit, ask, love (all connotations)
EIRE	bondage, slavery; a wreath of olive or laurel
EIRESI	wound round with wool
EIRESIA	ply, rowing, oar
ESIA	concave / to see mentally, see, perceive, behold
ESI	impulse, tendency, an aiming at, sending forth, sit
SIA	food?
SIAS	cause loathing or disgust / broken olive

There is a whole long, independent word within the seer’s name. Teiresias contains εἰρεσία (eiresia), from the verb ἐρέσσω (eressō). The verb means to row, speed by rowing, drive, ply, i.e., work with a tool, especially one requiring steady, rhythmic movements. The noun means rowing, oaring, throbbing. Rowing is a specific movement and a very iconic signifier. Oars move forward in the air and back in the sea. Otherwise, the boat would not travel. The concept of a back-and-fro movement that does not follow the same route in both directions applies to many human activities using tools. For example, wiping water or dust from a solid surface, combing hair, writing, turning a screw, or, more abstractly, following a program, repetitive industrial work, etc. The English verb to ply contains the sememes of diligent, steady, vigorous, regular, and persistent pressure applied on a tool in a particular direction for some purpose. The same sememes apply to English rowing and Greek eiresia. Teiresias seems, therefore, to be an action or a tool of this kind. Irreversibility is also evoked by the mytheme that Athena couldn’t wave her curse. The wordmaker seems to have added a letter at the start and one at the end of eiresia to make up Teiresias. Before going any further, let me note the damage that the phonocentric change of spelling from Teiresias[3] to a more modern Tiresias has done to the semantics of the name.

According to Saussure’s theory of arbitrariness of linguistic signs, the poet could have used any related root verb to covey the sememes of diligent pressure applied on a tool, e.g., wiping or combing. The choice of eiresia (plying, rowing) would be arbitrary unless Teiresias is a kind of oar or a plier (tool to ply). Neither eiresia, the starting T, nor the final S was chosen randomly because Teiresias can thus be split as Teir-esias to covey further information about the object. Words starting with tei indicate applying some force in a specific direction. For example, τείνω (teinō) means to stretch by force, pull tight, aim at, direct towards, extend, and lengthen. Homer calls the stars τείρεα (teirea) because they never move back on the same side of the sky. The same notion of monodirectional work applies to building a wall, τειχίζω (teichizō), and, of course, the wall τεῖχος (teichos). When tei- is followed by R[4], teir- denotes an irreversible, monodirectional process causing wear. The stem is phonetically rendered in English tear. The Homeric verb τείρω (teirō) is the only Ancient Greek verb starting with teir- and means to wear out or away, oppress, exhaust, distress, or weaken. It is used for age, hunger, sweat, weapons, ulcers, troubles, rubbing hard, etc. Therefore, Teiresias should be a monodirectional wearing process or tool. If this is what the poets had in mind, they had no choice but use T in front of -eiresia-. There are other possibilities, but they convey other meanings: ἀείρω (aeirō) means to lift, raise up (using A as an up-arrow)[5], κείρω (keirō; with K for reducing width), to cut, and πείρω (peirō; with P for a mouth, hole, orifice), to pierce quite through. These are all monodirectional, irreversible processes (-eir-; /ir/), like εἴρω (eirō), to say, tell, speak, i.e., to utter words in a sensible order following a line of thought.

According to Plato, the ending morpheme esia of eiresia – also found in Teiresias – equals ἐσσία (essia), οὐσία (oysia) and ὠσία (ōsia), all meaning essence, substance, the matter of things[6]. Eiresia (eir-esia; rowing, oaring) has at least two significant parts. The first (eir-) means a monodirectional, irreversible process or movement. The second (-esia) is the substance, matter of a thing, which obviously is the sea. Thus, oaring transcribes the notion of a monodirectional movement in the sea matter, i.e., seawater. Esia, or essia, is also glossed as ἔσσιμος (essimos), meaning concave, of surfaces, which accentuates the notion of depth inside the matter of a thing, the bite. Essia reminds the German Essen (to eat) and English essential (essen-tial; /ɪˈsɛn.ʃəl /). At the end of the day, essential (corrupted essen-sial?) is only what enters the aerodigestive tract.

What about Teiresias? What is the substance here? To specify the matter, the poet adds a terminal S and creates the ending sequence -sias as found in ἀκεσίας (akesias), one who heals, physician or surgeon, midwife, from ἄκεσις (akesis; compare English ache), healing, cure, mending, repair, or plaster[7]. When one adds a terminal S to sia, one literally ends sia. Sia starts words like σιαίνω (siainō) to cause loathing or disgust; σιαλίς (sialis), drivelling; σιαλίζω (sializō), to slaver, foam, make noises in the throat with expectoration; σίαλον (sialon), spittle, saliva, synovial fluid; σίαλος (sialos), fat, grease, fat hog; σιαντία (siantia), nuisance, disgust; and σιαγών (siagōn), jaw-bone, jaw, cheek. Like sialon became saliva in English, sial- became sale (dirty, vile, despicable) in French. Another iconic French word, chiasse (runs, diarrhoea, vexation, pain, annoyance), is probably a phonetic loan for Greek sias (/ʃjas/). I argued elsewhere that sia means food, as a-sia (Asia) means lack of food famine (see section Europe and Asia).

Letters preceding the ending -sia frequently signify preparations or characterizations before eating (or mouth-work in general, e.g., ἀφασία, aphasia, speechlessness). For example, ἀβρωσία (abrōsia) is a want of food, fasting; ἀγρεσία (agresia), hunting, chase, of fish, draught, take; αἱρέσια (airesia), dues paid on the discharge of cargoes; ἀκρασία (akrasia; with a privative a-), inadequate mixture, ill temperature, of meats; ἀκαθαρσία (akatharsia; also privative a-), uncleanness, foulness, impurity, something inedible; θυσία (thysia), burnt-offering, sacrifice; ἀμβροσία (ambrosia) the food of the gods, of immortality, an elixir, a mixture of water, oil, and various fruits; and so on. Letters and stems following sia- as in the examples of the above paragraph, denote consequences of eating, mainly foulness, pollution, and digestive issues. Thus, the ending sia-s of Teiresias would literally mean food-end.

With the semantics of teir- traced to an irreversible, monodirectional process causing wear and -sias, as food-end, Teiresias starts looking like the guy or the tool for rubbing and cleaning up the mess after a meal and its undesirable consequences, perhaps a healer, but most probably just a cleaner. An independent word starting with eire-, not followed by S, is the Homeric term εἴρερος (eireros) which means bondage, slavery, pointing to a slave who does the dirty work after the meal. More frequent, however, is eiresi- from εἰρεσιώνη (eiresiōnē), referring to a branch of olive or laurel wound round with wool, a wreath hung with fruits, borne about by singing boys at festivities where offerings were made to Helios and the Hours; afterwards, it was hung up at the house door. Winding is, again, a monodirectional process (eir-). A similar wreath is still made in Greece with flowers during traditional 1st of May festivities and hung up at the house door for a couple of months, presumably to celebrate spring and bring prosperity to the household. With olive and laurel oils being considered appeasing and healing products, there is little doubt the festive wreath symbolizes a branch wrapped with wool, soaked in such oils, and used for delicate body cleaning.

If so, Teiresias would turn out to be a rubbing tool made of a wooden stick (branch) wound round with wool, soaked in an appeasing (essential) oil, moving diligently in a single direction – like an oar – for the purpose of cleansing and repairing the undesired effects of feeding (drivelling, vomiting, defecation, etc.) after a meal. Remember, Teiresias was born and lived in Thebes, Boeotia; therefore, it primarily refers to infancy and baby-care innovations (see section Cadmus in Boeotia and Thebes).

Upon observing his wife applying wads of cotton to toothpicks, Leo Gerstenzang[8] conceived the idea of manufacturing a ready-to-use cotton swab. In 1923, he founded a firm that marketed baby care accessories (Schueller 1996). This event may have marked the first modern industrial production of cotton swabs, but if my hypothesis is correct, cotton or wool swabs already existed in Homer’s times.

Figure 1. Cotton swabs. Artwork by Aney (Creative Commons license) and Gregory F Maxwell (GNU Free Documentation License).

Cotton swabs look like oars (eiresia; Fig 3.9.1). Like Teiresias, they have a stick that allows them to easily walk in and out of the ear. They are blind because wool is wound around their eyes, and they cannot see where they go inside the ear. Moreover, they are soaked in water or oil. However, they are seers, prophets, and predictors because they can mentally see and predict something to be removed. In Homer, Odysseus, the pipe water (see section Odysseus) meets and humidifies the cotton swab Teiresias in the underworld (the wound). The swab needs to suck blood before delivering its diagnosis. If the wool sucks blood, the prognosis is terrible. But the worst can be avoided with some care. For example, if the impurities of the tap water used for wound cleansing (companions of Odysseus) are thoroughly removed (die out), the prognosis gets much better.

Later, authors were greatly amused with Teiresias’ change of sex after separating the two copulating snakes with his stick. The two snakes are the pieces of wool wound around the stick’s ends. They are indeed literally separated by the stick. Suppose Teiresias means cotton swab, and the middle stem eiresia (rowing, oaring) represents an oar stick. In that case, the two wound wool snakes separated by the oar stick are the initial T and the terminal S of T-eiresia-s. By separating these two snakes, we have the word eiresia, which is feminine. By putting back the snakes to copulate again, we get the masculine T-eiresia-s. The seven years that lasted Teiresias’ gender change correspond to the seven letters of -eiresia, the length of separation between the initial T and final S. The funniest is, perhaps, the Latin-born verb to copulate, from copulatus, to join together, couple, bind, link, unite. In Greek, this verb is homophonous to the root of the Greek verb κωπηλατέ-ω (kōpēlate-ō), meaning to row. That κωπήλατ-ος (kōpēlat-os) means formed like an oar!

Fun left aside, the ancient authors knew exactly the morphology and meaning of the word Teiresias. They created their myths (riddles) to transmit this knowledge to their students through fun mental exercises. The students learned nothing by heart – they wouldn’t be able to build temples with such nonsense – but were obliged to solve the riddles like they did with mathematical exercises. The kids had enough to study the thousands of technical terms (proper names, theonyms, toponyms, etc.) in the Iliad and the Odyssey. These books contained everything people needed to know, from personal hygiene, cuisine recipes, and literary criticism to mechanics, architecture, and marker economics, but religion. We will explore only some of the most famous terms in the relevant chapters. No wonder these books were studied by generation after generation for centuries till the invasion of the Judeo-Christian curriculum and methods. The theatre, revisiting the significant terms and riddles, was a pedagogical tool for mass education analogous to our television. The public could read the plays at a macro level, generating emotions and ethical messages and explaining how things are related at a micro level. By so developing public awareness, the development of democracy was only a matter of time.

Table 2. The semantics of Tiresias’ parents, Everes (EYĒRĒS) and Chariclo (ChARIKLŌ)

EYĒRĒS
EYĒRĒS	well-fitted, well-poised, easy to handle
EY	well, water (see section Ey)
ĒR	blood, juice; lift, raise up, draw (water), lift and take away, remove…
EYĒR	good to draw (water)
EYĒRĒ	ladle
ĒRĒ	Heracles, Hera (wood-; house; wooden houseware)
ChARIKLŌ
ChAR	grace, favour, beauty, joy, delight
ChARI	give freely, gratify, or indulge
ARI	very, goodness, excellence
ARIK	difficult, hard to bear, hard to deal with, irksome, prolific
RIK	shrivelled, shrunk, contracted
RIKL	ventricle, -
KLŌ	cage, twig, spray, slip, thread, fibre

Tiresias was the combination (son) of Εὐήρης (Eyērēs) and Χαρικλώ (Chariklō). The semantics of the parent terms are listed in Table 2. The common adjective εὐήρης (eyērēs) means well-fitted, well-poised, easy to handle. In Homer, the term always refers to oars, but it acquires the meaning of well-knit later. Hippocrates uses it in instruments well-fitted for medical purposes [9]. We recognize the root ey, a very common Greek diphthong meaning well, and water (see sections Ey and Zeus – the rain). The remaining letter sequence contains ἠρ (ēr), a contraction of ἔαρ (ear[10]), for blood, juice, or ἦρα (ēra), from ἀείρω (aeirō), to lift, raise up, take up, draw water, bear as a burden, lift and take away, remove, take away, put an end to, clear away, etc. The compound stem eyēr is found in εὐήρυτος (eyērytos), meaning good to draw water (e.g., absorbent), as well as in εὐήρετμος (eyēretmos), well fitted to the oar. It is also in εὐήρεια (eyēreia), meaning a fair voyage by boat as well as tolerance of or indifference to evil, dishonest conduct, looseness, uncritical facility, hastiness, indifference to danger, ease, agreeableness, comfort, dexterity, skill. The whole eyērē- from Eyērēs is also in εὐηρημένοι (eyērēmenoi) glossed by Hesychius as τετορυνημένοι, from τορύνω (torynō), to stir up or about, cognate of τορύνη (torynē), stirrer, a ladle for stirring things while boiling[11]. These are tools for operations that cannot, or must not, be done by necked hand. The subsequent stem, ērē, is found in ἠρήρει (ērērei), from ἀραρίσκω (arariskō), to join, fit together, fasten, construct, fit, equip, furnish with a thing, please, gratify, agreeable, welcome, prepared, ready. It is also in ἠρήρειστο (ērēreisto), from ἐρείδω (ereidō), to fix firmly, plant in, prop up, support, stay, press hard, push, thrust, infix, plant in, press closely, be tight, of bandages. Eyērēs likely has a wooden part readily found in the household (e.g., a toothpick). Because ērē is Ἥρη (‘Ērē), a Homeric version of the goddess Hera, and Hera represents the household, probably the wooden items of it (see section Hera and Heracles – the house and the wood). If true, Eyērēs would literally be rendered as water-pick.

Tiresias inherits its structural and functional properties from its father, Eyērēs, and potential uses from its mother, Chariklō. Following the semantic walk of the latter term as summarized in Table 2, we find char most frequently in words about grace, beauty, and gratitude (e.g., χάρις; charis), or joy, delight (χαρά; chara). But char also starts words about crafting, particularly designating sharpness and accuracy, like χαράσσω (charassō), to make pointed, sharpen, cut, scratch, smite, engrave, carve, sketch, draw, mark, or χάρμη (charmē), tip, point of a lance, spear-head, spear-shaft. Moving away from the initial ch (Chi; X; point, mark), we find the Homeric ἀρι (ari), for very, and arik from ἀρίκεσι (arikesi), glossed as χαλεπαῖς (chalepais; Hesychius). The latter means harsh, hard to bear, painful, grievous, hard to do or deal with, irksome, cruel, harsh, stern, most dangerous or troublesome, painful, miserable, and severe. Then, rik is exclusively for ῥίκνωσις (‘riknōsis) and its cognates and metaphors; they all essentially refer to the shrivelling of the skin. The stem rikl is not found in Greek, but it is used in the English ventricle, probably also as a wrinkle. The ending of Chariklō, klō, is not a typical ending morpheme. In fact, it only occurs as such in Chariklō. But it starts several words related to threads and fibres or meaning enclosure using such materials. For example, the leading verb κλώθω (klōthō) means to twist by spinning, making a thread, especially of the goddess of fate (Klōthō; Clotho) who spins a man’s thread of life or of fate. The noun κλῶσμα (klōsma) means thread or clue, and κλών (klōn) means thread or fibre, but also twig, spray or slip.

The uses of Tiresias transmitted genetically from its mother are, therefore, cherishing and caring of skin for grace and beauty when it wrinkles or, in more painful and dangerous circumstances, before closing (stitching) and covering wounds for healing. Its father transmitted its structure and function with an absorbent material fixed firmly to a wooden stick, like an oar, providing easy handling and cleaning operations in places where no necked hands are allowed.

Claims

Everes = well fitted

Chariclo = cherishing, caring

Tiresias = the cotton swab

References

Brisson, Luc. 1976. Le Mythe de Tirésias: essai d’analyse structurale. Vol. 55. Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain. Leiden: Brill.

Loraux, Nicole. 1978. “L. Brisson, Le Mythe de Tirésias. Essai d’analyse Structurale [Compte-Rendu].” L’Homme, De l’idéologie 18 (3–4): 238–42.

Schueller, Randy. 1996. “Cotton Swab.” BNet. CNET Networks, Inc. 1996.

 

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[1] Apollod.3.6.6.

[2] Hom.Od. 11.2.

[3] Hom.Od. 11.2.

[4] R is often interpreted herein as head, top, or surface.

[5] Compare ἀήρ (aēr; genitive ἀέρος; aeros), mist, haze, lower air; later, generally air; adjective ἀέριος (aerios), misty, in the air, high in the air, of the air, aerial, broad as air (note H, for wide, in aēr), infinite, indefinite, vain, futile,; neuter adjective ἀέριον (aerion), gas.

[6] ἐσία in LSJ; see also Plat.Crat. 401c or H N Fowler’s translation.

[7] As used by 1st century BC natural philosopher Asclepiodotus Tacticus and by 2nd century AD Greek physician, surgeon, and pharmacist Galen; Asclepiodotus quoted in Gal.13.442.

[8] Leo Gerstenzang in English Wikipedia; accessed 27 May 2021.

[9] Hp.Medic.2.

[10] Compare the English ear in both senses, the organ of hearing and (shape of) the seed-bearing head or spike of a cereal plant and oar.

[11] Compare French torréfacteur, coffee roaster.