Narcissus. This tragic story of madness and death has cast a particularly potent spell, not least of all because of Ovid’s perceptive and moving poetry. We do not expect Ovid to be so profound. The ominous words of Tiresias predict the tragedy in a fascinating variation of the most Greek of themes: “know thyself,” preached by Apollo and learned by Oedipus and Socrates. “When his mother inquired if Narcissus would live to a ripe old age, the seer Tiresias answered, ‘Yes, if he will not have come to know himself.’”
The fact that a male lover’s prayer for just retribution is answered defines the homoerotic nature of Narcissus’ self-love and self-destruction. Narcissism and narcissistic have both become technical psychological terms and part of our everyday vocabulary.