Reader

MENIPPUS It’s difficult to tell now, Tiresias, whether you’re blind, as our eyes are all alike—empty, with nothing but sockets. Indeed, you can no longer tell which was Phineus, or which was Lynceus. Phineus was blind, Lynceus renowned for his sharpness of sight. But I do know you were a prophet, and the only person to have been both man and woman. I heard that from the poets. So, for heaven’s sake, tell me which life you found more pleasant—when you were a man, or a woman? TIRESIAS The woman’s life, Menippus, by a long way. It has fewer worries, and women have the mastery over men, and don’t have to fight in wars, or stand on the battlements, or argue in parliament, or be crossexamined in court.

MENIPPUS Then you haven’t heard, Tiresias, what Euripides’ Medea Euripides, Medea, 11. 230-231 and 11. 250-251. said about women’s pitiable plight in having an unhappy lot, and having to endure intolerable suffering in childbirth? But tell me, now that I’m reminded of it by Medea’s lines from the play, did you ever have any children, when you were a woman, or did you remain barren and childless in that life? TIRESIAS Why do you ask that, Menippus? MENIPPUS It’s an easy enough question, Tiresias. Just answer, if it’s not too difficult. TIRESIAS I wasn’t barren, but I didn’t have any children. MENIPPUS That will suffice; I wanted to know if you had a womb. TIRESIAS Of course I did. MENIPPUS And in time your womb gradually disappeared, the woman’s place sealed up, your breasts subsided, you grew a male organ and produced a beard? Or was your change from woman to man sudden? TIRESIAS I don’t understand the object of your question, but it seems to me you don’t believe things happened like that. MENIPPUS Why shouldn’t I disbelieve such a story, Tiresias, rather than accept it like a dolt without examining whether its possible or not?

TIRESIAS Then you don’t believe any of the other stories either, when you hear of women changing into birds or trees or beasts, as, for example, Aedon, or Daphne, or the daughter of Lycaon? Aedon became a nightingale, Daphne a laurel tree, and Callisto a bear. MENIPPUS If I ever come across them, I’ll learn what they have to say. But when you were a woman, good sir, were you a prophet then too, just as later, or did you learn to be man and prophet at the same time? TIRESIAS You see, you know nothing about me, or how I settled a quarrel of the gods, When Zeus and Hera were quarrelling as to whether males or females had more pleasure in life, cf. Ovid. Met. 3, 316. and Hera blinded me, and Zeus consoled me in my misfortune with the gift of prophecy. MENIPPUS So you still keep to your falsehoods, Tiresias? That’s just like you prophets; you’re habitual liars.