Tiresias

I keep wondering about Tiresias while reading the Oedipus Rex. Who is he? What is he? Is he a famous man or a prophet? I tried to figure out the relationship between Tiresias and the other characters in the Oedipus Rex. Also, I find a lot of information about Tiresias through the Internet. Here, I want to share my finding on Tiresias. Tiresias (also called Teiresias) was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo; Tiresias participated in fully seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself. Tiresias was a prophet of Zeus. I heard that there are different stories were told of the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. An alternate story told by the poet Pherecydes was followed in Callimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas"; in it, Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged her to undo her curse, but Athena could not; instead, she cleaned his ears, giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury.
On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese, as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair a smart blow with his stick. Hera was not pleased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. According to some versions of the tale, Lady Tiresias was a prostitute of great renown. After seven years as a woman, Tiresias again found mating snakes; depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according to Hyginus, trampled on them. As a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. This ancient story is recorded in lost lines of Hesiod. There are several version of Tiresias and I picked this one because I think it was reliable for me as a reader of Oedipus Rex.I had concentrated on the character of Tiresias in this play because I think he gave a great effect on the readers especially me while reading the story. For me, even though he was physically blind, but he was spiritual sighted compared to Oedipus who was physically sighted but morally blind.
In the story, Tiresias appeared in the beginning of the story where Oedipus, the king of Thebes, calls upon Tiresias to have an investigation on the killing of the previous king Laius. I like the character of Tiresias because he was the one who developed the theme of blindness by using his own physical blindness to reveal to Oedipus his mental blindness. Also, I found out that Tiresias was responsible for imposing dramatic irony because of his great knowledge of the truth of Oedipus.He revealed that Oedipus who had committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus throws him out of the palace, but then afterward realizes the truth.
The language used was quite hard for me to interpret the meaning of some sentences as well as understand this play, but after watching the movie of Oedipus Rex, my problems perished accordingly. Hopefully, this can help readers a lot while reading Oedipus Rex especially knowing the truth about Tiresias. If the readers still do not understand this play, they should see the movie of Oedipus Rex. For the readers,the DVD is available now and please buy the original one. :)