Tiresias

Tiresias is a man from Greek mythology who for seven years changed sex, after he struck two intertwined snakes. He is known for being a seer and occurs in many classical texts. In Ovid's Metamorphoses he is asked whether men or women experience more pleasure in sex (this is in Eliot's note), and immediately afterwards follows the section in which he predicts the fate of Narcissus, which the episode with the typist and the "young man carbuncular" imitates (see below).