Īccording to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke, 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. She becomes a man once again after an encounter with the Muses, until finally Aphrodite turns him into a woman again and then into a mouse. She was turned by Apollo into a man, then again a woman under unclear circumstances, then a man by the offended Hera, then into a woman by Zeus. According to Eustathius, Tiresias was originally a woman who promised Apollo her favours in exchange for musical lessons, only to reject him afterwards. Tiresias is presented as a complexly liminal figure, mediating between humankind and the gods, male and female, blind and seeing, present and future, this world and the Underworld. In Hellenistic and Roman times Tiresias' sex-change was embellished and expanded into seven episodes, with appropriate amours in each, probably written by the Alexandrian Ptolemaeus Chennus, but attributed by Eustathius to Sostratus of Phanagoria's lost elegiac Tiresias. This ancient story was recorded in lost lines of Hesiod. Either way, as a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. 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 woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. Hera was displeased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese, as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair with his stick. Pliny the Elder credits Tiresias with the invention of augury.
Like other oracles, how Tiresias obtained his information varied: sometimes, he would receive visions other times he would listen for the songs of birds, or ask for a description of visions and pictures appearing within the smoke of burnt offerings or entrails, and so interpret them.
Taken from Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid). Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera.
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