Editing Tiresias (section)

=== Sex-change ===
[[File:Tiresias striking the snakes.png|thumb|300px|right|Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera. Engraving by [[Johann Ulrich Kraus]] c. 1690. Taken from ''Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii'' (The Metamorphoses of Ovid).]]
On [[Mount Cyllene]] in the [[Peloponnese]],<ref name="Phlegon"/>{{refn|group=note|[[Eustathius of Thessalonica|Eustathius]] and [[John Tzetzes]] place this episode on [[Mount Cithaeron]] in [[Boeotia]], near the territory of Thebes.<ref name="Bibliotheke III.6.7"/>}} Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes and hit them with his stick, which displeased goddess [[Hera]] who punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including his daughter [[Manto (daughter of Tiresias)|Manto]] who also possessed the gift of prophecy. Afterwards, as told by Phlegon, god of prophecy [[Apollo]] informed Tiresias: if she spots copulating snakes and similarly harms them, she will return to her previous form. After seven years as a woman,{{refn|group=note|The period referenced from Ovid's ''[[Metamorphoses]]''.}} Tiresias found mating snakes; depending on the myth, she either made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according [[Gaius Julius Hyginus|Hyginus]] and Phlegon, trampled them. In both outcomes, Tiresias was released from the sentence and changed back to a man.{{refn|group=note|At the account of Eustathius and Tzetzes, "it was by killing the female snake that Tiresias became a woman, and it was by afterwards killing the male snake that he was changed back into a man."}}<ref name="Bibliotheke III.6.7"/><ref>{{cite book|author=[[Gaius Julius Hyginus]]|title=Hygini Fabulae|section=LXXV}}</ref><ref name="Phlegon">{{cite book|author=[[Phlegon of Tralles|Phlegon]]|title=Book OF Marvels|section=4|quote=Phlegon cites [[Hesiod]], [[Dicaearchus]], [[Klearchos]], and [[Kallimachos]] as his sources.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=[[Ovid]]|title=[[Metamorphoses]]|chapter=III|pages=324–331}}</ref>

<!---In [[Hellenistic]] and Roman times Tiresias' sex-change was embellished and expanded into seven episodes, marked by appropriate amours and probably written by the Alexandrian [[Ptolemaeus Chennus]],{{cite needed|date=March 2012}} but attributed by [[Eustathius of Thessalonica|Eustathius]] to Sostratus of Phanagoria's lost [[Elegiac couplet|elegiac]] ''Tiresias''.<ref>{{cite book|author=[[Eustathius of Thessalonica|Eustathius]]|title=Commentary on Homer's Odyssey|section=10.494.}}</ref> 
Doesn't have a reference since 2012
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According to [[Eustathius of Thessalonica|Eustathius]], Tiresias was originally a woman who promised Apollo her favours in exchange for musical lessons, only to reject him afterwards. 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. She became a man once again after an encounter with the [[Muses]], until finally [[Aphrodite]] turned him into a woman again and then into a mouse.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=O'Hara |first=James J. |date=1996 |title=Sostratus Suppl. Hell. 733: A Lost, Possibly Catullan-Era Elegy on the Six Sex Changes of Tiresias |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/370177 |journal=Transactions of the American Philological Association |language=en |volume=126 |pages=176–178 |doi=10.2307/370177 |jstor=370177 |issn=0360-5949}}</ref>