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The muse Polymnia and the god Apollo visit the seer Tiresias during his last night
Polymnia: Tiresias, are you asleep?
Tiresias: Yes goddess, I am.
Polymnia: Completely asleep?
Tiresias: Yes, completely.
Polymnia: Then you are listening?
Tiresias: Yes, most clearly.
Polymnia: Let us see, when did I visit you the last time?
Tiresias: I do not remember too well, goddess; you and your sisters do not visit my kind very often. But it was in my bird-observatory.
Polymnia: And what did I tell you while you were sleeping in your bird-observatory?
Tiresias: I recall you saying that what I was prophesying had been made up by you and your sisters, for there was nothing, you said, not even myself, beyond your and your sister's tales.
Polymnia: So what are you, Tiresias?
Tiresias: A Theban seer, thanks to Apollo, gracious lady.
Polymnia: Yes, thanks to him, although he did not give you but a tiny part of what he knows. What are you more, Theban seer?
Tiresias: A poor mortal ravished by your greatness.
Polymnia: Are you not a tale yet, stubborn seer?
Tiresias: If you say so, I must be one, but I cannot see it.
Polymnia: You must see everything, although you are blind, but listen can you not.
Tiresias: I would like to. But how could that be?
Polymnia: How could it not? Am I not myself a tale?
Tiresias: What you are you know best yourself, goddess.
Polymnia: Yes, and you cannot tell because you mortals, living between unimpaired light and complete darkness, have a fragile mind. Do you remember who covers that gap?
Tiresias: Your mother Memory does, and the more we remember, I recall you saying, the more we know, and the more we forget, the more ignorant we become.
Polymnia: And who says so?
Tiresias: You say, goddess.
Polymnia: No, the tale says, and I am the tale and you are the tale, and we are now saying what my mother allows us to say. Do you follow me now?
Tiresias: Do we say we are a tale?
Polymnia: That is what we say.
Tiresias: And who is telling it?
Polymnia: The poet.
Tiresias: And you give him the authority?
Polymnia: Yes.
Tiresias: But you yourself are the tale he tells?
Polymnia: Yes, and everything else too, although he repeats what we whisper in his ear.
Tiresias: I see. What is going to happen then?
Polymnia: The seer asked what is going to happen.
Tiresias: I mean what is going to happen with all tales.
Polymnia: They will go on for ever, as tales do, Tiresias.
Tiresias: Shall I go on for ever, then?
Polymnia: Yes, they will be talking about you thousands of years from now.
Tiresias: I have heard many tales that are now forgotten.
Polymnia: This is a sacred true tale, Tiresias, watched over by my mother.
Tiresias: What if mortals get tired and cease to believe in your sacred true tales?
Polymnia: What has Belief, who comes and goes and has no form, to do with it?
Tiresias: People could believe the sacred true tales to be lies.
Polymnia: And what would that amount to? Lies are the servants of truth. And the tale being true, we will remain in the midst of the most bizarre beliefs and watch how they vanish.
Tiresias: How is that? Remain where?
Polymnia: Incorrigible seer! What do you wish to believe in now? I will tell you nothing, for you love to spread everywhere the sickness of blind belief... Nevertheless I like you Tiresias. But now I must leave.
Tiresias: Already? Did you come to mock me, goddess? What do you wish?
Polymnia: I came because you are a good tale, though you do not know it yourself. Farewell, Tiresias. Do not wake up: someone else is coming in now.
[Polymnia leaves; Apollo comes.]
Apollo: Tiresias!
Tiresias: Oh Lord, I am dreaming...
Apollo: Yes, you are. Do you still feel the heavy weight of Sleep upon you?
Tiresias: Yes I do, but I would like to be able to open my blind eyes and watch your sweet presence.
Apollo: Do not open your eyes or you will not see me at all.
Tiresias: I know, I know, great Lord... Oh, what bliss! Thank you for coming in this moment of distress to comfort my tired soul with your light. Your servant is now a miserable refugee: Thebes has been sacked and I have lost my daughter to the enemy. Look around in this camp and you will find nothing else but cowards and thieves. What is inside these peoples' minds, Lord? Are they not all refugees? Why do they torture each other with crimes? Are the sufferings that the Argives inflicted on them not enough?
Apollo: This is how things were supposed to be, and you have known it because I told you the tale.
Tiresias: Yes Lord, and yet I cannot suffer it!
Apollo: The end of these sufferings of yours is at hand.
Tiresias: How is that, sweet Lord?
Apollo: Tomorrow you will reach Haliartus...
Tiresias: That is so.
Apollo: ...And you will go to the nearby fountain at Tilphussa and you will drink from its waters.
Tiresias: I will certainly fulfill your wish. What will happen then?
Apollo: You will die by the spring.
Tiresias: I see; how will that happen?
Apollo: I will be there to shoot you down with an arrow.
Tiresias: Oh, Apollo! Thank you, my Lord! That honour is more than I ever could have hoped for!
Apollo: You have deserved it.
Tiresias: Thank you, thank you a thousand times! And I do not dare to ask you how I could have deserved this happiness. What will happen then?
Apollo: You go to Hades.
Tiresias: Shall I? Oh, Apollo! I am speechless...and, to tell you the truth, I suspect that I will remain so in that shadowy place. For how could I say anything or even think, being but a shadow myself? And who could be interested in prophecy in that realm of no return?
Apollo: You will keep your wits in Hades.
Tiresias: Will I? How is that possible?
Apollo: Persephone has agreed to it.
Tiresias: Oh, Blessed One! And yet nothing gives me more fear than my own wits. For it seems to me that being surrounded by confused souls I would rather prefer to sleep for ever, like Endymion. But tell me Lord: which is the purpose of this arrangement?
Apollo: Odysseus will visit you there before his own death.
Tiresias: Oh! Do you mean that little child from Ithaca? Is he going to descend alive to Hades? Will he be as mighty as the gods?
Apollo: He will not be as mighty as the gods, but you will instruct him so that he may return home.
Tiresias: Are you telling me that I am sent to Hades so that Odysseus may find his way home?
Apollo: That is the whole idea.
Tiresias: And could he not be instructed in another place, good Lord? I recall hearing that the father of one Aeneas, who is not yet born, will wait for his son in the Elysian Fields and there he will show him both past and future and many blissful things.
Apollo: Yes, but that is not the way your tale goes, Tiresias.
Tiresias: Tale?
Apollo: That is what I said.
Tiresias: I see. You mean, as someone else shortly before did, that I am a tale or part of one?
Apollo: Yes, you are, just as Polymnia told you before I came.
Tiresias: Oh Lord! Can you tell me how this tale will end?
Apollo: Tales never end, Tiresias. At least not these ones.
Tiresias: What will happen?
Apollo: Whatever the poet tells, which is, for example, that tomorrow you will die at Tilphussa, that some years from now Troy will face destruction, that the Achaeans will meet sedition at home, that Odysseus will wander for many years, that you will meet him in Hades, and many other things, some of which you already know.
Tiresias: Yes, I do know many of these...tales. But what will happen next?
Apollo: The tales will be told, for that is the purpose of tales.
Tiresias: And you and the gods are inventing the tales?
Apollo: Tales are not inventions, Tiresias, they are just rearrangements.
Tiresias: And it is you who rearrange them?
Apollo: No, we are tales as everything else.
Tiresias: That is what Polymnia said.
Apollo: Because I told her to.
Tiresias: And the poet, who Polymnia said is telling the tale, is he also a tale?
Apollo: The tale makes the poet as well.
Tiresias: I thought it was the other way round.
Apollo: Are you not a seer, Tiresias?
Tiresias: Thanks to you.
Apollo: And when you utter a prophecy, do you invent the things that will happen, or do they make of you a prophet by letting you refer to them beforehand, and then happen?
Tiresias: I am a prophet because they will happen and I know about them beforehand.
Apollo: So, you do not make them up first and later utter prophecies about your own creations?
Tiresias: No, I could not call it prophecy to talk about events which I know beforehand through profane means.
Apollo: Well, when a poet makes good poetry, he knows that it is not made by him, but that it is the tale that makes a wonderful poet out of him, by the grace of Memory, her daughters and myself.
Tiresias: And yet you and they are part of the tale?
Apollo: Why should we stay outside? We are part of it no less than you are.
Tiresias: How come you never taught me that, sweet Lord? Why cannot I see it even now?
Apollo: Because you are a seer, Tiresias.
Tiresias: Oh Apollo! Do you hide something from me? I feel sleepy, I cannot think.
Apollo: That means you are about to wake up. I leave now. Remember: Tilphussa at midnight; Death will be there too.
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