Da indovino tebano a profeta universale: alcune metamorfosi di Tiresia in età tardoantica

The present article deals with some late antique or early medieval interpretations of the figure of Tiresias, the Theban seer around whom a series of legends concerning his blindness and his transgender status had been established already in the archaic and classical period. The allegorization Greco-Roman myths underwent in Christian literature is obvious in Fulgentius’ interpretation of Tiresias, which links his story to the seasonal cycle, and in the Ovide moralisé, while Clement of Alexandria relies on Euripides’ Bacchae and describes Tiresias as a priest whose religion has to be overcome by the most perfect revelation of Christ, the true hierophant. An isolated passage in Lactantius Placidus’ scholia on Statius’ Thebaid, finally, interprets Tiresias as a powerful seer, thus providing the first kernel of the Demogorgon legend.