History of Monsters — Ulisse Aldrovandi, 188

also because he was accustomed to lie with Semele, the daughter of Cadmus. For this reason, Juno decided to disguise herself as Beroe, Semele’s nurse, to persuade the woman not to receive Jupiter into her chamber in any other way than the one he used when visiting Juno. Consequently, wanting to please his mistress, Jupiter entered her home armed with thunder and lightning; however, the house was set ablaze by such brilliance, and Semele was suddenly consumed by the fire. To save the son conceived in Semele’s womb from the impending danger of death, Jupiter took him from the womb and sewed him into his own thigh, keeping him there until he reached full maturity for birth, after which he handed him over to the nymphs to be raised. Regarding this transformation of Juno into Beroe, Ovid writes:

Then she feigned old age, placing white hair at her temples, plowing her skin with wrinkles, and moving her curved limbs with a trembling gait. She even took on an elderly voice; she was Beroe herself, Semele’s nurse from Epidaurus.

Furthermore, they say that Jupiter and Juno once argued in jest over whether a man or a woman receives greater pleasure during intercourse. They appointed Tiresias, the son of Everes, as the judge of this controversy, since he had experienced both sexes. Once, while in the forest, he had struck two mating serpents with his staff and was transformed into a woman. He spent seven years in that sex, but upon striking the same snakes again, he regained his original male form.

...The decision was made to seek the opinion of the learned Tiresias, for both kinds of love were known to him. For once, with a blow of his staff, he had violated the bodies of two great serpents as they mated in a green forest. From a man, he was made—miraculously—into a woman, and lived through seven autumns. In the eighth, he saw the same snakes again and said, "If there is such power in a strike that it changes the nature of the giver to its opposite, I shall strike you again now." And having struck the same snakes, his prior form returned.

Tiresias therefore upheld Jupiter's opinion and ruled against Juno. Indignant, she blinded Tiresias, but Jupiter compensated him by granting him the knowledge of the future. The first to seek his prophecy was the nymph Liriope, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, who wished to know if Narcissus—whom she had conceived by the river Cephisus—would live to an old age. Tiresias promised her all would be well, provided that Narcissus never came to know his own beauty. They say Narcissus was a youth of remarkable beauty, whose company many nymphs sought—especially Echo, the daughter of Juno. Burning with love for the youth and pursuing him in vain as he fled, she wasted away and was changed into a voice, which to this day is still called Echo.

Wasting away shrivels her skin, and all the moisture of her body vanishes into the air. Only her voice and bones remain; the voice stays, but they say her bones took on the shape of a stone.

Narcissus had mocked other nymphs as well. To punish him, Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, led him—exhausted from hunting—to a spring. Looking into its water, he was captivated by love for himself. Overcome by the greatest sorrow, he died, and from his body there later emerged a flower of the same name.

Here the boy, weary from the heat and the rigors of the hunt, lay down, drawn by the appearance of the place and the spring. While he sought to quench his thirst, another thirst grew within him. As he drank, he was seized by the image of the form he saw; he fell in love with a hope without a body, believing that which was only a shadow to be a physical thing.

And a little further down:

Nowhere was his body to be found; instead of a body, they found a saffron-colored flower with white petals encircling its center.

Because of the death of Narcissus, Tiresias the seer was considered much more truthful. Only Pentheus, the son of Echion and Agave, despised Tiresias's prophecies; indeed,