Tiresias. Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera.
Engraving from Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid) by Johann Ulrich Kraus, c. 1690 Tiresias was a prophet of Apollo. Overview[edit] Eighteen allusions to mythic Tiresias, noted by Luc Brisson,[2] fall into three groups: one, in two episodes, recounts Tiresias' sex-change and his encounter with Zeus and Hera; a second group recounts his blinding by Athena; a third, all but lost, seems to have recounted the misadventures of Tiresias. Tiresias within The Waste Land and “The Story of Tiresias” “The Story of Tiresias” from Ovid’s Metamorphoses lends a significant bit of background information to our understanding of Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Tiresias is introduced during “The Fire Sermon.” Though we had yet to read “The Story of Tiresias,” we learned that “…Tiresias ha[s] foresuffered all/ Enacted on this same divan or bed;/ [Tiresias] who ha[s] sat by Thebes below the wall/ And walked among the lowest of the dead.” (Eliot 141) We did not know, however, why or how Tiresias had experienced life as both a man and a woman.
Upon reading “The Story of Tiresias,” we learned that because Tiresias had separated two serpents mating in the woods, he was turned into a woman. After seven years had passed, he found himself in a similar situation, separated the serpents again and was transformed back into a man. Like this: Like Loading... Sibyl/s.
The Sibyls were oracular women believed to possess prophetic powers in ancient Greece, The earliest Sibyls, ‘who admittedly are known only through legend,’[1] prophesied at certain holy sites, under the divine influence of a deity, originally—at Delphi and Pessinos—one of the chthonic deities.
Later in antiquity, a number of sibyls are attested in various writers, in Greece and Italy, but also in the Levant and Asia Minor. The English word Sibyl (/ˈsɪbəl/ or /ˈsɪbɪl/) comes — via the Old French Sibile and the Latin Sibylla — from the ancient Greek σίβυλλα (sibulla, plural σίβυλλαι sibullai),[2] Varro derived the name from theobule ("divine counsel"), but modern philologists mostly propose an Old Italic[3] or alternatively a Semitic etymology.[4] History[edit] The first known Greek writer to mention a sibyl is Heraclitus, in the 5th century BC: Number of Sibyls[edit] Persian Sibyl[edit] "brought up in Palestine named Sabbe, whose father was Berosus and her mother Erymanthe.
Cumaean Sibyl. The Cumaean Sibyl is one of the four sibyls painted by Raphael at Santa Maria della Pace (see gallery below.)
She was also painted by Andrea del Castagno (Uffizi Gallery, illustration right), and in the Sistine Ceiling of Michelangelo her powerful presence overshadows every other sibyl, even her younger and more beautiful sisters, such as the Delphic Sibyl. There are various names for the Cumaean Sibyl besides the "Herophile" of Pausanias and Lactantius[1] or the Aeneid's "Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus": "Amaltheia", "Demophile" or "Taraxandra" are all offered in various references. Ancient Roman prophecies[edit] Carthage. Downfall of the Carthaginian Empire Lost to Rome in the First Punic War (264BC – 241BC) Won after the First Punic War, lost in the Second Punic War Lost in the Second Punic War (218BC – 201BC) Conquered by Rome in the Third Punic War (149BC – 146BC) Carthage (/ˈkɑrθɪdʒ/; Arabic: قرطاج Qarṭāj, Berber: ⴽⴰⵔⵜⴰⵊⴻⵏ Kartajen) is a suburb of Tunis, Tunisia that was the centre of the Carthaginian Empire in antiquity.
Historically Carthage has been known as: Latin: Carthago or Karthago, Ancient Greek: Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn, Etruscan: *Carθaza, from the Phoenician 𐤒𐤓𐤕 𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 Qart-ḥadašt[7] meaning New City (Aramaic: קרתא חדתא, Qarta Ḥdatha), implying it was a 'new Tyre'.[8] Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War culminated in the Carthaginian victory at Cannae and led to a serious threat to the continuation of Roman rule over Italy; however, Carthage emerged from the conflict weaker after Hannibal's defeat at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. Topography[edit] History[edit] Carthage. Philomela. The Rape of Philomela by Tereus, engraved by Virgil Solis for a 1562 edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book VI, 519-562).
Philomela or Philomel (Ancient Greek: Φιλομήλα) is a minor figure in Greek mythology and is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary, artistic, and musical works in the Western canon. She is identified as being the "princess of Athens" and the younger of two daughters of Pandion I, King of Athens and Zeuxippe. Her sister, Procne, was the wife of King Tereus of Thrace. While the myth has several variations, the general depiction is that Philomela, after being raped and mutilated by her sister's husband, Tereus, obtains her revenge and is transformed into a nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), a migratory passerine bird native to Europe and southwest Asia noted for its song.
Philomela in the Waste Land. BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Cleopatra.