Telephos
Telephos parents were Heracles and princess Auge, the daughter of King Aleus of Tegea. King Aleus, who knew an oracle predicting that a son of Auge would cause the death of one of his sons, installed her as priestess in Athena’s temple, a post requiring perpetual virginity. However during Heracles stay at Tegea, he falls in love with princess Auge.
On discovering that she was pregnant, Aleus was angry and sent his daughter to the sea to be drowned; on the way there, according some texts, she bore Telephos. In Nauplia, King Nauphilus placed both mother and sun in a chest, and set it adrift; they landed according one version in Mysia, where Auge brought Telephus up. Another version of the story asserts that she bore the child in Athena’s temple and hid it there, as a result of which the goddess caused the land to be barren.
Her father, King Aleus inquired the reason for this pestilence, and discovered his daughter offense. He therefore abandoned and exposed the child on Mount Parthenium, and sent Auge to Nauphilus for sale as a slave overseas. She was sold to Teuthras, king of Teuthrania on the River Caicus in Mysia. While according to traditional version Telephos was discovered by some shepherds in the care of a doe, (elaphos, gr.) which was suckling him (‘a teat’, thele, gr.) named him Telephos (thele + elaphos), according to another more recent heroic version, Herakles discovered Telephos being suckled by a lioness.
They brought him up in the company of Parthenopaeus, who also had been abandoned nearby. They were great friends. According some authors, Auge herself abandoned Telephus on Mt. Parthenium to hide her shame, or that she bore him there on the way to Naupila. When Telephus grew up, he wanted to know the identity of his parents, because he had been taunted at Aleus’ court with being a nobody. On receiving this offense, he killed the person who offended him. The oracle came true: the dead man was Aleus’ son. In any case, it is agreed that Telephus consulted the Delphi Oracle, which sent him to Mysia to find out his origins.
Accompanied by Parthenopaeus, he sailed to Teuthrania, where, at the head of an army of Greek invaders, he helped to drive out Ideas. Teuthras, who had no son, made him his heir. In one version Teuthras had married Auge. According another, (analogy with Oedipus), however, he had adopted her as his daughter, and now insisted on marrying her to Telephos as a part of his reward. Auge, though unaware she was his mother, was opposed to the match, according to some accounts because she wished to remain faithful to Heracles’ memory. So she took a sword to bed with her, intending to stab him. But miraculously an enormous snake appeared in the bed between them, and then Auge, terrorized confessed her intention. Telephos, understandably outraged, prepared to kill her; whereupon she called on Heracles for his help, and Telephos why she had appealed to the Hero. Then she told him the story of her seduction, and they thus came to recognize each other.
In the Hyginus version of the story, Telephos then married Ardiope, Teuthras’ daughter. His wife was alternatively given as Astyoche (Laodice), a daughter of Priam.
While Telephos was on the throne of Teuthrania, the Trojan War broke out ; as Priam’s son-in-law, he supported the Trojan side. The Greeks mistakenly landed in Mysia, believing it to be Trojan territory. Telephos fought against them, killing Polyncies’ son Thersander, but was himself wounded by Achilles when his foot caught in a grapevine. After the Greeks returned home, Telephos’ wound had still not healed up. He consulted an oracle and was told :- He that wounded shall also heal.(from Iliad) Then dressed in beggar’s rags, he went to Mycenae, where the Greek captains were preparing another expedition against Troy.
He confided his plight to Clytemnestera, who advised him that the only way to gain his point with the kings was to seize the child Orestes and supplicate Agamemnon. He did so, urging that Achilles should cure him. The Greek commanders, who had received an oracle that they should reach Troy only if Telephos guided them there, supported his request. Achilles declared that he had no experience as a doctor ; but Odysseus saw the deeper meaning in the oracle, and suggested that it referred to Achilles’’ spear rather to Achilles’ himself. So a little rust from the spear was applied daily to the wound, and in the few days it had healed.
Telephos guided the Greek fleet to Troy, but refused to join them. After his death, his son Eurypylus, in the last year of the war, led Mysia reinforcements to aid Priam. The myth of Telephos was in later times reinforced by the Attalid kings of Pergamon in Mysia. Telephos founded the cults of Dionysos, Athene and Zeus at Pergamon
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