Liveley, G. (2003). Tiresias/Teresa: a Man-Made-Woman in Ovid's Metamorphoses 3.318-38

Liveley, G. (2003). "Tiresias/Teresa: a "man-made-woman" in Ovid's Metamorphoses 3.318-38." Helios 30(2): 147(16).

Quite simply, the women don't know what they are saying; that's the whole difference between them and me.

--Lacan, Seminaire XX

The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are "the opposite sex" (though why "opposite" I do not know; what is the "neighbouring sex"?). But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world.

--Dorothy Sayers, The Human-Not-Quite-Human(1)

Tiresias is rare among the characters of the Metamorphoses. He is one of few figures in Ovid's poem of transformation whose metamorphosis is impermanent. (2) He is a man made woman made man again, and it is on the premise of this transsexual experience that he is introduced to Ovid's narrative. (3) Having lived as both man and woman--his temporary sex change being the result of once striking two copulating snakes with his staff--Tiresias is assumed to have direct knowledge of the different voluptas (sexual pleasure) experienced by men and women. He is considered to be doctus (learned) about men, women, and sex, and also to possess a privileged "authority of experience" when it comes to questions of sex and gender. Thus, when the gods disagree over whether men or women experience greater sexual pleasure--Jupiter says women do, Juno disagrees-- Tiresias is called in as arbiter:

forte Iovem memorant diffusum nectare cures seposuisse graves vacuaque agitasse remissos cum Iunone iocos et 'maior vestra profecto est 320 quam, quae contingit maribus' dixisse 'voluptas.' illa negat, placuit quae sit sententia docti quaerere Tiresiae; venus huic erat utraque nora. nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu 325 deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem vidit et 'est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,' dixit 'ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet. nunc quoque vos feriam.' percussis anguibus isdem 330 forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago. arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Satumia iusto nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte. 335 at pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto scire futura dedit poenamque levauit honore. (4)

It happened that Jove, they say, mellowed with nectar put aside his heavy cares to goad leisured Juno with gentle jokes. "Your voluptas is definitely greater than that which men experience," he said. She denied it. It pleased them to ask the opinion of learned Tiresias: he knew both sides of Venus. For once he had disturbed two huge snakes, mating in the green forest, with a blow from his staff, and from man (amazingly) he was made a woman, spending seven years so; in the eighth s/he saw the same snakes again and said, "If in striking you there is such power to change the sex of that striker to the opposite, now I will strike you again." Striking the snakes, his/her former shape was restored, and s/he took on the shape with which s/he'd been born. So he, appointed as judge in this playful dispute, confirmed Jove's words: Saturnia was aggrieved, they say, unreasonably and more seriously than the subject deserved, and she condemned the eyes of her judge to eternal night. But the omnipotent father (for it is not permitted that any god can undo what another god has done) for his loss of sight gave Tiresias power to know the future, lightening the punishment with this honor.

While these things are said to have happened on Olympus, on earth it happened, so they say, that Lacan, not necessarily mellowed with wine but under the influence of the traditions of the symposiums and without (absolute) seriousness, goaded Irigaray with (gentle) jokes. Ignoring and denying the accounts that women might have to offer of their own experience(s) of sexual pleasure, Lacan appealed to another man for confirmation of his "knowledge" about women. Provocatively, Lacan attempted to account for the inability of women to understand their own sexual pleasure by appealing, not directly to (a) woman, but to a "man-made-woman." (6) Referring to Bernini's statue of an ecstatic Saint Teresa, Lacan wrote:

saint Teresa--you only have to go look at the Bemini statue in Rome to understand immediately she's coming, no doubt about it. And what is she enjoying, coming from? It's clear that the essential testimony of the mystics is that of saying they experience it but know nothing about it. These mystical ejaculations are neither idle gossip nor mere verbiage, in fact they're the best thing you can read--note, right at the bottom of the page, add to them Jacques Lacan's Ecrits ... (70; emphasis in original)

In rejoinder Irigaray refutes Lacan. Provocative in return and playfully mimicking and echoing the words of the pater omnipotens, she challenges Lacan's assumption that "the geography of feminine pleasure is not worth listening to," that "women are not worth listening to, especially when they try to speak of their pleasure" (90). She further questions the silencing of women in the Lacanian account of women's jouissance, asking why "the right to experience pleasure should be awarded to a statue," to a man-made representation or construction of a woman, of Woman, why women are not asked or permitted to speak of their own experiences of jouissance:

"Just go look at Bernini's statue in Rome, you'll see right away that St. Theresa is coming, there's no doubt about it." In Rome? So far away? To look? At a statue? Of a saint? Sculpted by a man? What pleasure are we talking about? Whose pleasure? For where the pleasure of the Theresa in question is concerned, her own writings are perhaps more telling. But how can one "read" them when one is a "man"? The production of ejaculations of all sorts, often prematurely emitted, makes him miss, in the desire for identification with the lady, what her own pleasure might be all about. (90-91)

The pattern of this eroticized debate provokes other questions: Just how serious is the jovial Lacan in his epistemological claim (70) that "women don't know what they are saying" when they talk about their own experiences of sex? Is he (only) joking? (7) Does Irigaray perhaps take him and his "man-made-woman"--Bernini's St. Teresa--too seriously? What have Lacan and Irigaray to do with reading Ovid anyway? Can the dialogic debate between Jacques and Luce inform a reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses? And can a reading of the Metamorphoses, in turn, inform our appreciation of the debate between Lacan and Irigaray?

The first thing that strikes the "careless observer" is that in the Ovidian narrative, as in the debate between Lacan and Irigaray, women are perceived to be unlike men. Female and male are configured not only as "different" but as "opposite" (contraria, 3.329). The careful reader, however, may notice that in both debates about men, women, and sex, it is the differences within, no less than the differences between, the two sexes that are highlighted. In the Metamorphoses, the transformations of Tiresias seem to suggest women and men may have more in common as "neighbouring sexes" than their conventional configuration as "opposites" might admit. And in the dialogue between Lacan and Irigaray, Irigaray's mimetic repetition of Lacan's words illustrates some fundamental similarity between (this) man and (this) woman, suggesting that, despite Lacan's claims to the contrary, "women are more like men than anything else in the world." Indeed, as the differences between Ovid and Lacan become more clear, the differences between Tiresias and Teresa seem ever less obvious.

In the Metamorphoses, emphasis is given to the lighthearted nature of the dispute between Juno and Jupiter. Although the context of their debate appears playfully set, the care with which this apparently carefree episode is established belies the very quality of playfulness that the narrative attempts to promote. The opening lines introduce a scene that is emphatically relaxed and carefully casual, arousing the reader's concerns just as Jove puts his own away. Despite--or, indeed, because of--the narrator's gentle "Once upon a time ..." opening (3.318) and the reiteration of details to confirm Jupiter's relaxed and playful mood, the lighthearted humor of this episode appears contrived. Might there be a more serious aspect to this "bantering" between the gods? Might this episode be concerned with issues relating to authority, knowledge, and linguistic power, as well as, or even rather than, its stated concern with the question of whether women or men experience greater sexual pleasure? The idea that such issues are of concern in this narrative is signalled explicitly in its introduction by the authorial observation memorant ("so they say," 3.318); a similar sign appears towards the conclusion of the narrative, as the author distances himself from reports of Juno's reaction (fertur, 3.334) to Tiresias's judgement Both of these signs from the text's immediate author indicate deferred authority, knowledge, and linguistic power. They also point towards these very issues, which were already flagged as central themes in the Theban cycle of the Metamorphoses, as bearing, along the lines of what we saw in the "playful" debate between Lacan and Irigaray, particular significance in this "lighthearted" episode. (8)

In Ovid's narrative, significantly, it is Jupiter rather than Juno who is described as carefree and relaxed from drinking (3.318-20). But the description of the god's lighthearted mood reminds the discerning reader that he can also be hardhearted. The "heavy cares" that he puts aside in this episode refers back to his recent encounter with Semele, (9) the woman who is destroyed when he comes to make love to her in the form of a thunderbolt (3.284-85). Alison Sharrock's description of the event highlights not only the strong sexual and phallic connotations of Jupiter's physical transformation but also its provocative absurdity:

When Semele, mother of Bacchus, is tricked by Juno into asking Jupiter to make love to her in all his glory, the father of gods and men knows that his uis, his sexual power, will be too much for her. He tries to wear himself out first, by casting thunderbolts around. Even with these precautions, however, he cannot control himself, and Semele is burnt to a crisp.

Jupiter's attitude towards his debate with Juno on the subject of men, women, and sex, then, is established at an early point in the narrative as uncertain. It is far from clear whether his decision to "goad" (agitasse, 3.319) Juno is determined as a playful act--an act that Juno takes too seriously--or whether his goad is deliberately pointed to cause Juno pain (dolus, 3.334), perhaps by way of retribution for her recent obstruction to his affair with Semele. Despite such narrative uncertainty, however, W. S. Anderson is convinced of Jupiter's ill intentions: "Jupiter, pretending to dominate his 'cares,' is hypocritical, and, presuming to tease Juno about sexual pleasure, is a rat." (10)

Juno's mood and her attitude towards the debate are similarly ambiguous. She is described as being idle or at leisure (3.319), but the significance of this does not necessarily position Juno in the same mood as Jupiter. Vacua, which agrees grammatically with Juno, most obviously suggests idleness and leisure, but when used of women it can also connote "sexual availability." (11) Does this connotation perhaps hint at an erotic context to the debate between the gods? Having put aside (seposuisse, 3.319) his lover Semele, is Jupiter now looking for another sexual partner? Other vocabulary with erotic and elegiac connotations might be adduced to support this view. Jupiter puts aside his cares (curas, 3.318), which, in an elegiac context, would indicate his love- troubles and, in this specific context, his very recent "love-troubles" with Semele. He "goads" Juno (agitasse, 3.319, a term that has hunting connotations and is also a familiar metaphor for erotic pursuit). His jokes are "gentle" (remissos, 3.320, a term often used of relaxed limbs [membra]), while the jokes themselves (iocos, 3.320) may be "jests of love." (12) The debate between the gods, it would seem, makes use of eroticized language no less than the debate between Lacan and Irigaray, who talk explicitly of "coming" and, more obliquely, of "ejaculations" both "mystical" and "premature."

Since both are initially pleased to consult Tiresias, one might assume that Juno shares Jupiter's playfulness in the eroticized context of this debate. But Juno's responses to Jupiter and later to Tiresias might be better understood if we recognize that Jupiter's joviality is not shared by his partner, that Juno appears to take this debate seriously. While Juno is often represented as the ill-tempered, ill-humored wife of playful, amorous Jupiter, in this narrative her anger appears to be at odds with the context of the story. In particular, there seems to be no obvious offence attached to Jupiter's claim that women experience greater voluptas than men. So why, then, is she angry? Why does she take offence at what Jupiter and Tiresias have to say about men, women, and sex? (13) Anderson (368) suggests that Juno "had every right to disagree [with Jupiter and Tiresias] in view of the rarity of her voluptas, in marriage and extramaritally, and the all too frequent self-satisfaction of lustful Jupiter (most recently with Semele)." Perhaps, then, Juno is angered by Jupiter's and Tiresias's claims because they do not reflect her experiences of sex and sexual voluptas. Jupiter's declaration, subsequently confirmed by Tiresias, may or may not accurately represent the sexual experiences of womankind, of "Woman," but Juno denies that it represents her experience as an individual woman, (14) When she is asked to speak of the sexual experiences of women, she can only comment with any authority upon her own experiences. Jupiter's use of the plural vestra ("yours") in his declaration about female voluptas implies that his declaration relates to the sexual pleasure of all women, and to include Juno in the set of all women. The ambiguity of vestra, however, which might also or rather denote the (singular) pleasure of Juno alone, focuses attention upon the potential for difference and disagreement entailed in any definitive claim to universal truth, including the universalizing strategies that often inform discourses of sex and gender. Juno, then, seems to be invited by Jupiter to comment upon the experiences of her sex. But in commenting instead upon her own experiences, she challenges the legitimacy of Jupiter's own "knowledge" of (the) universal Woman, and also appears to raise a note of skepticism regarding the notion that Jupiter can speak with any authority about the sexual experiences of "all men" (maribus, 3.321), the set in which he apparently includes himself. This skepticism, moreover, is tested beyond its limits when Jupiter appeals to the transsexual Tiresias, who claims the power to speak with authority upon the sexual experiences of all men and all women.

Whether or not she is invited to speak for her sex or for herself, and whether or not this might explain her denial of Jupiter's claim about men, women, and sex, Juno's knowledge of her own experience is explicitly denied authority in this debate? (15) Indeed, Juno's authority is undermined by her sex, and women are denied the right even to speak of and for women; this right, instead, is given to men. (16) Jupiter challenges Juno's "authority of experience" with his claim to know (3.320) that women experience greater voluptas than men, and an other "male" figure, the "man-made-woman-made-man" Tiresias, is called upon to confirm the god's words--quite unnecessarily, or so it seems. For we might imagine, first, that "omniscient" Jupiter should already know definitively whether men or women experience greater voluptas. (17) We might also suppose that metamorphic Jupiter--he who has already demonstrated his ability to transform himself into bull and thunderbolt--should be able to transform himself into a woman, have sex with a man, and on the basis of this "authoritative experience" declare his knowledge of voluptas. Above all, though, it is odd that the gods do not appeal directly to Venus. (18) Indeed, Venus's high-profile absence from this debate between the gods is emphasized in the text by the very formulation that attributes to Tiresias his authority on the subject of men, women, and sex, namely, that he "knows both sides of Venus/love" (venus huic erat utraque nota, 3.323). The juxtaposition of the first reference to Tiresias by name with the identification of the sexual act with Venus herself reminds us that her arbitration, her "testimony," might have been called upon but is not. The voice of another female figure is silenced, and a male figure is invited to speak in her place.

In the debate between the gods, then, Jupiter appeals to a "man-made-woman" to support his claim about men, women, and sex, while Juno apparently is invited to speak her knowledge of pleasure, not only as a woman, but as a representative of all other women, of Woman. Her voice, however, is effectively silenced (illa negat, 3.322); the form of her denial is unrepresented. Quite simply, we do not know what she is saying. A claim about her is made for her by (a) man; her response is suppressed and disbelieved. An appeal to a male arbiter is made, the evidence offered by a "man-made-woman" considered conclusive. Juno's words, her knowledge about her own experience, are dismissed. Considered from this perspective--even if Jupiter is joking--we may see why Juno is aggrieved.

In the dispute between Lacan and Irigaray, a similar dialectic informs the debate. Lacan claims that "Quite simply, the women don't know what they are saying; that's the whole difference between them and me" (65). For him, the difference(s) between men and women is (are), simply, determined by language. This "answer" to the question of what determines sexual difference, however, is not as straightforward as Lacan would like us to believe, for it raises a number of difficult questions: How does a man like Lacan know what women know? On what authority does he base his knowledge of the minds of women? It certainly is not by listening to them or by talking with them, despite his background in psychoanalysis; after all, if he believes that women "don't know what they are saying," there can be no point in asking them what they think they know or what they think they might be saying.

Can Lacan be serious in his claim that "women don't know what they are saying"? According to Lacan, the possession of power, language, and knowledge is symbolized by possession of the phallus. Are we to follow Lacan, then, and assume that men may possess these qualities because, anatomically speaking, they possess a symbol of the phallus, while women may be deprived of linguistic power, knowledge, and authority because they lack it? Although in Lacanian terms the phallus is claimed to have no designated external referent in the penis, Lacan's denial that the two are related is frustrating. (19) He asserts that the symbol of the phallus operates as a metaphor for power, language, and knowledge, independent of social or biological configurations of the male, yet his metaphor of the phallus perpetuates their association. Mary Ann Doane (220) asks the key question, "Does the phallus really have nothing to do with the penis, no commerce with it at all?" She claims that efforts to disassociate the two are made in vain: "There is a sense in which all attempts to deny the relation between the phallus and the penis are feints, veils, allusions. The phallus, as signifier, may no longer be the penis, but any effort to conceptualise its function is inseparable from an imaging of the body" (221). Recognizing that precise definitions and the identification of fixed properties are incompatible with much of Lacan's notoriously counterintuitive and slippery theory, Doane acknowledges that behind this Lacanian narrative of power, language, and knowledge, male and female anatomies do seem to determine the difference between those who possess (a symbol of) the phallus and those who do not; between those who possess linguistic power, knowledge, and authority and those who do not; between the women, who do not know what they are saying, and Lacan, who does. Irigaray would disagree with Lacan on such correlations. And so too might Ovid.

Lacan's idea that women can have experience of sexual pleasure but only men can have knowledge of it, and that only men can represent this knowledge, is forcefully (if playfully) refuted by Irigaray. She demonstrates that Lacan's reliance on a "man-made- woman" in the form of Bernini's statue of St. Teresa compromises his argument ab initio. Through her own writing she draws attention to the ways in which Lacan, even while ostensibly offering praise, effectively silences the woman's voice and subsumes St. Teresa's writings to the status of (Lacanian) footnotes. In particular, by explicitly conflating the erotic with the epistemic, Irigaray undermines Lacan's claims about female sexuality as the "premature ejaculations" of a man who comes too soon to his definitive knowledge about women. She highlights, moreover, the frustrating and potentially ridiculous implications of Lacan's insistence upon the phallus as symbol of linguistic power, knowledge, and authority, by coming back at him with his own identification of St. Teresa's writings as "mystical ejaculations." Is Juno's response to Jupiter in the Metamorphoses as effective? Anticipating Irigaray, does she also demonstrate that Jupiter's reliance on a "man-made-woman" in the form of transsexual Tiresias compromises his argument ab initio? In Ovid's narrative Juno does not speak directly of her own knowledge; but in blinding Tiresias, she forcefully asserts her claim that he knows nothing of her experience as a woman, that he does not see as a woman and, therefore, shall not see as a man. An authorial observation emphasizes her absolute authority in this act, with the comment that even omnipotent Jupiter (not so omnipotent as it turns out) cannot reverse the punishment, for no god is permitted to undo what another god has done (3.336-37); Jupiter can only seek to mitigate Tiresias's punishment by granting him the power to know the future. Yet, although this power is expressly identified as an honor (honore, 3.338), the subsequent tales of Narcissus and of Pentheus confirm that this power does little to benefit Tiresias or anyone else. Tiresias can see and know the future, but he can do nothing to influence it, and his words of prophecy are uselessly ambiguous. (20) He may see the future, but when he speaks about what he knows, when he attempts to represent his knowledge, we do not know what he is saying. Juno's punishment seems apt indeed.

Apt or not, Juno's reaction to Tiresias's judgement is explicitly condemned in the narrative as unreasonably severe (3.333-34), even though her behavior here is mild when compared to the violent vengeance that she had only recently inflicted upon Semele (3.253-315). The punishment that Juno inflicts upon Tiresias might also be favorably compared with the horrible punishment that Diana inflicted upon Actaeon in an earlier episode of the Metamorphoses' "Theban Cycle." This unfortunate victim of error, whose role in this story is played in other versions of this myth by Tiresias, is transformed into a stag by the vengeful goddess and torn to pieces by his own hounds (3.138-252). The narrative reports a mixed response to Diana's harsh punishment; some people see the goddess as too cruel, others as justifiably severe (3.253-55). No one, it seems, supports Juno in her punishment of Tiresias, yet some form of implicit defence for her actions may, perhaps, be inscribed in the narrative's emphatic identification of Tiresias at the point of his punishment as "Juno's judge" (suique / iudicis, 3.334-35). Tiresias has been transformed from the impartial arbiter (3,332), whom it "pleased" both Jupiter and Juno to engage in their dispute, (21) into a biased iudex (3.335). In this case, Juno might be justified in punishing her "judge" as she does, for the punishment of a partial judge was permitted by Roman law. (22) Allowing for this point of view, then, what might be the justification for Juno thinking that Tiresias is, indeed, a biased iudex?

The most obvious reason for Tiresias's partiality in his arbitration for the gods is his status as a "man-made-woman," a figure who is, despite his physical transformation of sex, first and foremost a man. On these grounds, his reputation for being doctus in affairs concerning men, women, and sex is unsound, while his "authority of experience" as a woman is open to challenge. (23) He may "know both sides of Venus" (3.323) but his experience of sexual pleasure--and his experience of being a woman--is colored by his masculinity. Tiresias was born a man (3.331) and even after his sex change he appears to remain a "man-made-woman." Like other characters in the Metamorphoses who become animals through an external transformation of forma and imago and yet continue to retain their human identities, (24) Tiresias appears to become a woman and yet remain a man, that is, a man-made-woman. But just as in the case of those characters whose easy transformations from human to animal destabilize notions of fixed identity by highlighting the (potential) animal in the human and the (potential) human in the animal, (25) so the easy transformation of Tiresias from man to woman (and back to man again) destabilizes notions of fixed gender identity. Here, it is instructive to make comparisons with some of the other transsexual figures from the Metamorphoses. Born a woman (12.175), Caenis/Caeneus, the Lapith warrior of Book 12, becomes a "hypermasculine" male hero who still is taunted by his opponents for his "femininity." Thus, the centaur Latreus impugns the Lapith's masculinity by jibing at Caeneus: "You will always be a woman to me, / you will always be Caenis to me" (nam tu mihi femina semper / tu mihi Caenis eris, 12.470-71). As Alison Keith puts it, "Caeneus' female natal origin threatens to render him less than male" (236). While we could say, too, that Tiresias's male natal origin--the anatomically configured sex with which he was born (genetiua ... imago, 3.331)--renders him less than female when he is transformed into a woman, (26) the "male" figure of Hermaphroditus (4.285-388) reminds us that natal origin may not confer absolute or stable gender identity. Hermaphroditus was born "in the image" of both his mother and father and is always (to a degree) already the hermaphrodite he becomes subsequent to his encounter with Salmacis. The idea that Tiresias remains essentially a man, even as a woman, is maintained, though perhaps not deliberately, in various English translations of his metamorphoses. While the Latin has no need to posit a specifically masculine or feminine subject as the agent who sees and speaks to the snakes in this episode, English requires the subject to be gendered. Thus, the potential ambiguity of the Latin is lost for a rendering that traditionally figures Tiresias as unambiguously male, his gender immutably fixed:

. in the eighth (year) he saw the snakes once more And said "If striking you has magic power To change the striker to the other sex, I'll strike you now again." He struck the snakes And so regained the shape he had at birth. (Melville 6; emphases added)

Ted Hughes's 1997 rendering of the story is unusual in its ready transformation of the gendered personal pronoun in reflection of Tiresias's own transformation:

He came across two serpents copulating. He took the opportunity to kill Both with a single blow, but merely hurt them--And found himself transformed into a woman.

After the seventh year of womanhood, Strolling to ponder on what women ponder She saw in that same place the same two serpents Knotted as before in copulation. 'If your pain can still change your attacker Just as you once changed me, then change me back.' She hit the couple with a handy stick, And there he stood as male as any man. (Tiresias, 17-28)

Unlike Melville's translation, Hughes's version of the story emphasizes the transformation of masculine to feminine subject. Yet his description of Tiresias's experience of the metamorphoses maintains the suggestion that Tiresias retains some qualities of his former "maleness" despite his physical transformation, his change in form. At, or immediately after, the moment of metamorphosis, Hughes's Tiresias finds "himself transformed into a woman," and later, strolling in the green wood, his mind turns "to ponder on what women ponder"--subtle indications of his ambiguous gender status. (27)

Melville, like Juno, perceives Tiresias as a "man-made-woman," emphasizing his masculinity, his maleness even as a woman; however, the close juxtaposition of vir and femina in the narrative's account of Tiresias's transformation from man to woman (deque viro factus, mirabile, femina, 3.326) reminds the reader of just how close these two ostensibly "opposing" (contraria, 3.329) positions or forms may be. The close relationship between the "neighbouring" sexes is further suggested in the descriptions of Tiresias's easy metamorphoses from one sex to the other. The representations of Tiresias's sexual transformations appear to emphasize change to his outward appearance, but the different physical attributes that characterize Tiresias as male and female receive no attention in this narrative. In the first transformation, he is "made a woman" (3.326), but no details of this "womanufacture" are offered. (28) Indeed, the authorial interjection mirabile (3.326) operates here less as an observation than as an occlusion.(29) We are not told how it is possible to make a woman from a man. The description of the reverse metamorphosis and the recovery of Tiresias's former sex is effectively no more explicit; it refers to a change in external or physical shape and appearance (forma prior rediit, genetiuaque uenit imago, 3.331) but provides no illustrative details. Thus, we are left very much in the dark as to how the effects of Tiresias's metamorphoses are realized, and as to how he may be different as a man and as a woman.

Tiresias is first pictured as a man walking alone in the green wood, staff in hand, ready to do violence to any unfortunate snakes caught in coitus. His preliminary attack upon the mating snakes seems unnecessarily aggressive, and is expressly represented in the narrative as a form of violation, an act with both sexual and religious connotations (baculi violauerat ictu, 3.325). As a result of this act (in which, according to other variations of the myth, significantly he attacks and kills only the female snake (30)), Tiresias is made a woman. (31) Tiresias makes a particularly unconvincing transsexual, however. S/he continues to "walk like a man," to walk alone in the green wood, staff still in hand, still ready to do violence to any copulating snakes. Thus, as both man and woman, Tiresias is represented as a figure prone to unprovoked violence. As both man and man-made- woman, we see the image of Tiresias striking the huge snakes with his/her staff--an image that seems loaded with phallic significance. (32) Yet it is not clear whether this continuity through change (a common aspect of transformation in the Metamorphoses) with respect to Tiresias's conduct suggests that the ostensibly "phallic" acts of stave- holding and snake-bashing may be performed equally by both men and women, or whether it suggests instead the fixed and immutable masculinity of transsexual Tiresias. The "thrice phallic" connotations (33) of the repeated snake-bashing episode may be seen to attribute to Tiresias a kind of hypermasculinity, an extreme form of masculinity that transcends even his physical transformation into a woman. (34) Alternatively, however, the phallic connotations of this episode may suggest that the phallus (albeit configured here as something of a blunt tool) may be wielded equally by both women and men.

The easy transsexual transference of markers of sex and gender has already appeared at this point in the Metamorphoses. In the story of Semele, which immediately precedes the Tiresias story, Juno asserts her right to wield the royal scepter as a (phallic) symbol of her authority (3.264-65). (35) Zeus the pater omnipotens offers his thigh as a womb in which to carry the baby Bacchus to term (3.310-12), since he had destroyed the infant's mother with his uncontrollable sexual vis (figured, with overt phallic connotations, as the force of a thunderbolt). It should be no surprise, then, that in the Tiresias story we see no difference in the physical appearance or behavior of Tiresias the man and Tiresias the woman. For Ovid, it seems that the markers of sex and gender are not fixed and immutable, but may be appropriated by either of the "neighbouring" sexes. Ovid's "manmade-woman" demonstrates that the phallus--ultimate symbol of masculinity, of linguistic power, knowledge, and authority--may be available to both women and men. Indeed, in appointing Tiresias as both man and woman with such an excess of phallic attributes, Ovid's narrative makes ironic use of the symbol of the phallus qua ultimate symbol of sex and gender identity. From this perspective, Ovid playfully, and provocatively, challenges the assumptions that men may have privileged access to power, knowledge, and authority, and that women are fundamentally different to men. Thus, the conclusion of this brief episode feeds back into its beginning. Masculine and feminine, male and female, are shown to be open positions that either sex may occupy, rather than mutually exclusive poles. As the gods attempt to stabilize and define gender positions on a differential basis, Tiresias's experiences as a "man-made-woman" points to the radical instability of definitions of male and female difference. As Juno and Jupiter disagree in their efforts to make definitive statements about perceived distinctions between women and men, their arbiter demonstrates, in spite of himself, that such distinctions are fundamentally unsound--that, fundamentally, "women are more like men than anything else in the world." (36)

(1) This epigraph is also found in Laquenr 1. Cf. Laqueur 10: "To be sure, difference and sameness, more or less recondite, are everywhere; but which ones count and for what ends is determined outside the bounds of empirical investigation. The fact that at one time the dominant discourse construed the male and female bodies as hierarchically, vertically ordered versions of one sex and at another time as horizontally ordered opposites, as incommensurable, must depend on something other than even a great constellation of real or supposed discoveries."

(2) Other characters who experience temporary metamorphoses include Io (1.568-746), Thetis (11.221-65), and Vertumnus (14.632-771). Other characters who experience transformations in sex include Sithon (4.279-80), Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (4.285- 388), Iphis (9.666-797), and Caeneus (12.146-209).

(3) On the importance of transsexual figures in the Metamorphoses see Nugent; Labate 51-52; Hinds 136-40; Ch. Segal; Keith. Keith 239 observes: "In a poem about transformation, it is perhaps not surprising that transsexual figures should enjoy a special thematic prominence. But these figures also point the way out of the two mutually opposed critical orthodoxies that have bedevilled gender studies of Ovidian poetry for the last two decades, in which the poet is interpreted either as promoting gender 'subversion' and sexual 'liberation' or as confirming a repressive heterosexuality."

(4) I cite the Metamorphoses from Anderson's text. All translations are mine, except where specified. In this passage, as elsewhere in this paper, I offer a provisional interpretation of the text from a particular perspective. Where translation would seem to impose closure upon a phrase or term (i.e., voluptas) that I would wish to keep "open," I have not always offered a translation.

(5) Cf. Janan for a reminder of Lacan's grounding in classical literature and ancient philosophy. On Irigaray's (French) classicism, see Leonard.

(6) See Heath 47-106. Heath observes that Lacan's reliance on a man-made image of woman (Bernini's statue of Saint Teresa) compromises his argument ab initio. (7) Cf. Richlin 169-78 on the critical politics of what she terms the Archie Bunker fallacy ("It's just a joke!").

(8) For a discussion of the central themes and motifs of the Theban cycle of Book 3 of the Metamorphoses, see Anderson 338-409. Anderson also identifies "trespassing on the sacred and being punished" and "matters of sexuality" as central themes in the stories of Cadmus, Actaeon, Semele, Tiresias, Narcissus, and Pentheus.

(9) Cf. Sharrock 2002: 96.

(10) Anderson 369, who also observes of Juno that "[h]er only pleasure, not exactly voluptas, in the poem so far, has been vengeance."

(11) Cf. Horace, Carm. 1.5.10, where Pyrrha is so identified. OLD offers a range of sexual connotations for vacuus. Although particularly used to denote "free from labour or occupation, at leisure, idle," it can also denote one "free from love," one "without a master or ruler," and, of women, "free, unmarried, or single" status.

(12) See OLD, s.v. iocus; cf. also Horace, Carm. 3.21.2.

(13) Glenn 34: "Juno, presumably because her matronly modesty is offended, not because Tiresias is wrong, strikes Tiresias blind, a physical way of indicating that he Perceives nothing."

(14) Diana Fuss, also arguing against the unacknowledged essentialist and universalizing agenda of some epistemological claims about sex and gender, warns: "There is little agreement amongst women on exactly what constitutes 'a woman's experience', therefore we need to be extremely wary of the temptation to make substantive claims on the basis of the so-called 'authority' of our experiences" (25).

(15) The story of Semele has already demonstrated how violently Juno may react against those mortals who would seek to challenge her authority.

(16) Cf. Harding x.

(17) The story of Semele, however, in which Jupiter appears rashly and unwittingly to promise destruction to his lover, may suggest that Jupiter is not, after all, "all-knowing." It is significant, perhaps, that one of the terms denoted by voluptus is "male semen" (OLD). Is it possible that this association connotes an implicit idea that in art erotic context voluptas refers to male, rather than to female, sexual pleasure?

(18) Another figure of authority to whom Jupiter and Juno might have turned for confirmation of Jupiter's claim about the voluptas experienced by both men and women is the deified personification of Voluptas, identified by Cicero in Nat. D. 2.23.61. (19) Jardine 139 suggests that, whatever the relation, "The woman reader, in any case, knows that [the phallus] is most certainly not hers."

(20) Cf. in particular the introduction to the story of Narcissus at 3.339-50.

(21) The legalistic connotations of this formulation undermine any suggestion that either Jupiter or Juno takes real "pleasure" in appointing Tiresias as their arbiter.

(22) On the use of legal terminology in the story of Tiresias, see Coleman. Although Coleman considers the question of partiality in her study of this case, she concludes that "Tiresias' conscientious verdict here is above reproach: he is the innocent victim of a deity who is a bad loser" (574). On the punishment of judges who were proved to have demonstrated partiality in a case, see Kelly.

(23) Coleman 574 observes that the application of this epithet--in legal terminology, a mark of jurisprudence--to the transsexual Tiresias is a "travesty."

(24) Much as Io is considered to become a woman in a cow's body, rather than a "real" cow. See also in the Metamorphoses the stories of Lycaon (1.163-252), Io (1.568-746), Callisto (2,401-530), and Actaeon (3.138-252). All these characters retain a sense of their former "human" identity despite their physical transformation.

(25) I am grateful to one of the anonymous referees of Helios for raising this point. The wolfish Lycaon (1.163-252) offers an obvious example of this instability of human/animal identity in the Metamorphoses.

(26) Also of relevance are the transformations of Jupiter as represented in the stories of Europa and Semele, which image Jupiter as a bull and as a thunderbolt, respectively. In both forms Jupiter is understood to retain his divine status and his gender, and in both forms and in both stories he is figured as emphatically male. The "masculine" characteristics attributed to thunderbolt and bull are highlighted by the sexual contexts in which these figures are set: the rape of Europa and the destruction through sexual intercourse of Semele.

(27) The focalization for the description of Tiresias's "pondering" in line 22 may, of course, be Hughes's, and the otherness invoked by the phrase "on what women ponder" may reflect the poet's own distance from "thinking as a woman." As the subject who "ponders" in this context, however, Tiresias is also necessarily implicated in this focalization. Cf. Fowler for an excellent analysis of the processes of such focalization in the Aeneid.

(28) Cf. Sharrock 1991. On "representing metamorphosis," Sharrock 1996.

(29) On the role of such authorial interjections and on the author-narrator as reader in the Metamorphoses, see Wheeler. (30) Hyginus, Fab. 75; Apollodorus, Bibl. 3.6.7.

(31) The parallels between this act of aggression, with its punishment and subsequent reward, and Tiresias's act of arbitration for the gods, with its own punishment and subsequent reward, are evident and yet ambiguous. In each instance, Tiresias acts as the witness in a matter related to sexual activity and seeks to assert his authority and power.

(32) Although there is no obvious etymological connection between baculum (staff) and penis, Adams 148 comments that the noun ictus was used to describe "the male sexual act," and that violo (199, 223) might be used to express sexual violence.

(33) Cf. N. Segal 4.

(34) A similar model of "hypermasculinity" could be adduced for Hercules, whose extreme maleness seems to transcend his cross-dressing as the slave of Omphale. Significantly, it is the very (phallic) symbols of his masculinity--his club and lion skin-- that Hercules removes in order to dress as a woman. Cf. Keith 221-23 for a study of Hercules as a model for epic masculinity in the Metamorphoses.

(35) Cf. Coleman 575 on Juno's emasculation of omnipotent Jupiter in her irreversible punishment of Tiresias.

(36) My thanks to Julien Deonna, Duncan Kennedy, Charles Martindale, Alison Sharrock, Tim Saunders, and Vanda Zajko for inspiration and encouragement. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers of Helios whose suggestions helped to develop this article, and Professor Robert Fowler of the Bristol Institute of Hellenic and Roman Studies for supporting my post-doctoral research on Ovid with a Junior Research Fellowship in 2000-2001.

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