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Updated: June 18, 2025
For it is declared in the Saturnian laws, that he who beholds the gods against their will, shall atone for it by a heavy penalty... When Teiresias had fallen into this calamity, Pallas, moved by the tears of Chariclo, endowed him with prophecy and length of days, and even caused his prudence and wisdom to continue after he had entered among the shades, so that an oracle spake from his tomb: and she gave him a staff, wherewith, as by a guide, he might walk without stumbling... And hence, Nonnus, in the fifth book of the `Dionysiaca, introduces Actreon exclaiming that he calls Teiresias happy, since, without dying, and with the loss of his eyesight merely, he had beheld Minerva unveiled, and thus, though blind, could for evermore carry her image in his soul."
Then he told of cunning Circe and her craft, and how he sailed to the chill house of Hades, to consult the ghost of the Theban prophet Teiresias, and how he saw his old comrades in arms, and his mother who bore him and brought him up when he was a child; how he then heard the wondrous singing of the Sirens, and went on to the wandering rocks and terrible Charybdis and to Scylla, whom no man had ever yet passed in safety; how his men then ate the cattle of the sun-god, and how Jove therefore struck the ship with his thunderbolts, so that all his men perished together, himself alone being left alive; how at last he reached the Ogygian island and the nymph Calypso, who kept him there in a cave, and fed him, and wanted him to marry her, in which case she intended making him immortal so that he should never grow old, but she could not persuade him to let her do so; and how after much suffering he had found his way to the Phaeacians, who had treated him as though he had been a god, and sent him back in a ship to his own country after having given him gold, bronze, and raiment in great abundance.
To him the leading cause of ruin is evil counsel. Over and over again this teaching is driven home. All the leading characters mention it, Antigone, Haemon, Teiresias, and when it is disregarded, it is remorselessly brought home by disaster.
Next how he came to Telepylus of the Laestrygonians, who brake his ships and slew all his goodly-greaved companions, and Odysseus only escaped with his black ship. Then he told all the wiles and many contrivances of Circe, and how in a benched ship he fared to the dank house of Hades, to seek to the soul of Theban Teiresias.
Thus reunited the two spent the night in recounting the agonies of their separation; Odysseus mentioned the strange prophecy of Teiresias, deciding to seek out his father on the morrow. A vivid description tells how the souls of the suitors were conducted to the realm of the dead, the old comrades of Odysseus before Troy recognising in the vengeance all the marks of his handiwork.
"After him came to me the soul of my mother, whom I had left alive when I sailed to Troy. Sorely I wept to see her, yet suffered her not to come near and drink of the blood till I had inquired of Teiresias. Then came Teiresias, holding a golden sceptre in his hand, and spake, saying: 'Why hast thou left the light of day, and come hither to this land of the dead, wherein is no delight?
Benares is the blind Teiresias of India: it has beheld the Divine Form, and in this eternal grace its eyes have even lost the power of seeing those practical advancements which usually allure the endeavors of large cities. Allahabad, although antique and holy also, has never become so wrapped up in religious absorption."
"Son of Laertes," he said, "thou man of daring, hast thou reached the limit of thy rashness, or wilt thou go yet further? Are there no perils left for thee in the land of the living that thou must invade the very realm of Hades, the sunless haunts of the dead?" "I came to inquire of Teiresias," answered Odysseus, "concerning my return to Ithaca.
Hast thou not yet returned to thy home? "To her I made answer: 'I came hither to inquire of Teiresias of Thebes, and my home have I not seen. Truly trouble hath followed me from the day that I first went with King Agamemnon to the land of Troy. But tell me, how didst thou die? And my father and my son, have they enjoyment of that which is mine, or have others taken it from them?
But the eyes of the father had long been silent, and the eyes of the daughter were bent on the Latin pages of Politian's `Miscellanea, from which she was reading aloud at the eightieth chapter, to the following effect: "There was a certain nymph of Thebes named Chariclo, especially dear to Pallas; and this nymph was the mother of Teiresias.
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