This article is about Telephus the son of Heracles

Heracles

Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

. The name also refers to the father of Cyparissus

Cyparissus

In Greek mythology, Cyparissus or Kyparissos was a boy beloved by Apollo, or in some versions by other deities. In the best-known version of the story, the favorite companion of Cyparissus was a tamed stag, which he accidentally killed with his hunting javelin as it lay sleeping in the woods...

.

A Greek mythological figure

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Telephus or Telephos (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: Τήλεφος, "far-shining") Telephus was one of the Heraclidae, the sons of Heracles

Heracles

Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

, who were venerated as founders of cities. Telephus was by far the most famous of these hero

Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...

es, and the various sites at which libation

Libation

A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a god or spirit or in memory of those who have died. It was common in many religions of antiquity and continues to be offered in various cultures today....

s were offered to placate his spirit occasioned etiological myths

Etiology

Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....

 of travels around the Greek mainland, in Magna Graecia

Magna Graecia

Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...

 and in Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...

. As with other heroes, a series of episodic epiphanies can be chronologically ordered and a rationalized "biography" synthesized.

Telephus was the son of Heracles and Auge

Auge

In Greek mythology, Auge a daughter of Aleus and Neaera and priestess of Athena Alea at Tegea, bore the hero Telephus to Heracles. Her father had been told by an oracle that he would be overthrown by his grandson. She secreted the baby in the temple of Athena...

, daughter of king Aleus

Aleus

Aleus was in Greek mythology a son of Apheidas, and grandson of Arcas. He was king of Tegea in Arcadia, and married to Neaera or Cleobule, and is said to have founded the town of Alea and the first temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. He had a son, Lycurgus, and two daughters, Auge and Alcidice. He...

 of Tegea

Tegea

Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village Stadio....

; and the father of Eurypylus

Eurypylus

In Greek mythology, Eurypylus was the name of several different people.-Son of Thestius:One Eurypylus was a son of Thestius. He participated in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar, during which he insulted Atalanta and was killed by Meleager.-Son of Euaemon:Another Eurypylus was a Thessalian king,...

.

He was intended to be king of Tegea

Tegea

Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village Stadio....

, but instead became the king of Mysia

Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...

 in Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

. He was wounded by the Achaeans when they were coming to sack Troy and bring back Helen to Sparta.

Birth

Aleus

Aleus

Aleus was in Greek mythology a son of Apheidas, and grandson of Arcas. He was king of Tegea in Arcadia, and married to Neaera or Cleobule, and is said to have founded the town of Alea and the first temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. He had a son, Lycurgus, and two daughters, Auge and Alcidice. He...

, king in Tegea and father of Auge, had been told by an oracle

Oracle

In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....

 that he would be overthrown by his grandson. So, according to varying myths, he forced Auge to become a virginal priestess of Athena Alea

Athena Alea

Alea was an epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, prominent in Arcadian mythology, under which she was worshiped at Alea, Mantineia and Tegea...

, in which condition she was violated by Heracles. Although the infant Telephus was hidden in the temple, his cries revealed his presence and Aleus ordered the child exposed

Infant exposure

The motif of infant exposure is a recurring theme in mythology, especially among hero births.Some examples include:* Sargon, King of Agade - Exposed to the river.* Moses - Exposed in a vessel made of reeds on the river.* Karna - Exposed to the river....

 on Mt. Parthenion, the "mountain of the Virgin [Athena]". The child was suckled by a deer through the agency of Heracles. Alternatively, Aleus put Auge and the baby in a crate that was set adrift on the sea. and washed up on the coast of Mysia

Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...

 in Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

. Alternatively, Aleus exposed Telephus and sold Auge into slavery; she was thereby given as a gift to King Teuthras

Teuthras

In Greek mythology, Teuthras was a king of Mysia, and mythological eponym of the town of Teuthrania. He received Auge, the ill-fated mother of Telephus, and either married her or adopted her as his own daughter. Later on, Idas was attempting to dethrone Teuthras and take possession of his kingdom...

.

In either case Telephus was adopted, either by King Corycus or by King Creon

Creon (disambiguation)

-Greek mythology and history:* Creon, King of Thebes in the legend of Oedipus.* Creon, King of Thebes and father of Megara* Creon, King of Corinth and father of Creusa* Creon, son of Heracles* Creon, the third Archon of Athens-Geography:...

.

Youthful travels

In his early manhood Telephus left home on a return journey to Tegea, where his adopted father had found him. King Aleus and the men in his palace accepted the handsome youth, but they still inquired about his lineage. When he told them that he did not know it—an ignorance stemming from their having abandoned him—one of the men of the palace started to taunt the young prince. In anger the youth grabbed the man by his hair and tossed him out of the window of the palace. The man was Lycurgus the son of Aleus, and so the prophecy

Prophecy

Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...

 had come true.

Telephus and Auge

Telephus' companion Parthenopaeus was destined to die at the gates of Thebes

Thebes, Greece

Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...

, but Telephus was destined to rule foreign lands and fight his fellow Greeks before they reached Troy. The two companions went off to Asia Minor to look for land to make their kingdom. They eventually came to Mysia

Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...

, where they aided King Teuthras in a war and defeated the enemy. For this the King gave Telephus the hand of his beautiful adopted daughter Auge.

Auge, who was still consecrated to the memory of Heracles, privately refused her father's decision and planned Telephus' death. She secreted a knife in the marriage bed and on the wedding night tried to kill Telephus, but Heracles separated the two with a flash of lightning and they both recognized each other as mother and son.

Telephus as king of Mysia versus the Achaeans

Telephus succeeded Teuthras as king of the Mysia

Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...

ns. One version states that this was because he had been given the hand of Teuthras' daughter Argiope

Argiope

-Greek Mythological Persons:* Argiope, a Naiad, a daughter of the River God Nile. She was wife of Agenor and mother of his children. More commonly known as Telephassa...

 and that it was she, not Laodice, who was the mother of Eurypylus. When the Greeks first assembled at Aulis and left for the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

, they accidentally found themselves in Mysia, where they were opposed by some fellow Achaeans. Myth provides explanations for this confrontation in assuming that their king Telephus was married to Laodice

Laodice

-Greek mythology:* Laodice , daughter of Priam, king of Troy* Laodice, daughter of Agamemnon, a.k.a. Electra* Laodice, one of the Hyperborean maidens* Laodice, consort of Phoroneus...

, the daughter of King Priam

Priam

Priam was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon. Modern scholars derive his name from the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous".- Marriage and issue :...

. Moreover, Paris

Paris (mythology)

Paris , the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek legends. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War...

 and Helen had stopped in Mysia on their way to Troy, and had asked Telephus to fight off the Achaeans should they come.
In another version of the myth, as depicted on the interior frieze of the Pergamon Altar

Pergamon Altar

The Pergamon Altar is a monumental construction built during the reign of King Eumenes II in the first half of the 2nd century BC on one of the terraces of the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon in Asia Minor....

, Telephus was married to the Amazon Hiera

Hiera (mythology)

Hiera is listed as the wife of Telephus in the frieze that decorated the interior of the Altar of Pergamum. Telephus is the mythic founder of the city of Pergamum, and there are many conflicting stories about him....

. She brought a force of Amazons to the aid of Pergamum, but was herself killed in the battle.
In the battle Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

 wounded Telephus, who killed Thersander

Thersander

In Homer's Iliad, Thersander was one of the Epigoni, who attacked the city of Thebes in retaliation for the deaths of their fathers, the Seven Against Thebes, who had attempted the same thing. He was the son of Polynices and Argea....

 the King of Thebes. This explains why in the Iliad there is no Theban King.

Telephus' wound

The wound would not heal and Telephus consulted the oracle of Delphi about it. The oracle responded in a mysterious way that "he that wounded shall heal". Telephus convinced Achilles to heal his wound in return for showing the Achaeans the way to Troy, thus resolving the conflict.

According to reports about Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

' lost play Telephus, he went to Aulis

Aulis

Aulis may refer to:* Aulis, , an ancient Greek town in Boeotia, and traditionally the port from which the Greek army set sail for the Trojan War.* Aulis, a daughter of King Ogyges and Thebe*Aulis, a genus of ladybird beetle...

 pretending to be a beggar; there he asked Clytemnaestra, the wife of Agamemnon, what he should do to be healed. She had three reasons to help him: she was related to Heracles; Heracles fought a war that made her father King of Sparta; and she was angry at her husband. Some versions say that Telephus promised to marry Clytemnaestra in return for her aid. Although he did not marry Clytemnaestra, she helped him by telling him to kidnap her only son Orestes

Orestes (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones....

, and to threaten to kill Orestes if Achilles would not heal Telephus' wound.

When Telephus threatened the young child, Achilles refused, claiming to have no cathartic knowledge

Catharsis

Catharsis or katharsis is a Greek word meaning "cleansing" or "purging". It is derived from the verb καθαίρειν, kathairein, "to purify, purge," and it is related to the adjective καθαρός, katharos, "pure or clean."-Dramatic uses:...

. Odysseus

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

, however, reasoned that the spear that had inflicted the wound must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus healed. This is an example of sympathetic magic

Sympathetic magic

Sympathetic magic, also known as imitative magic, is a type of magic based on imitation or correspondence.-Similarity and contagion:The theory of sympathetic magic was first developed by Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough...

. Afterwards Telephus guided the Achaeans to Troy.

The Achaeans asked Telephus to join them. However he declined their offer, claiming that he was the son-in-law of King Priam through his wife Laodice

Laodice (mythology)

Laodice was the daughter of Priam of Troy and Hecuba. She is described as the most beautiful of Priam's daughters. Laodice refers to Helen as her junior even though Helen is probably 34 years old and yet she is more beautiful than her sister Cassandra, who might be eighteen at the same time and who...

.

Telephus was one of the men that competed in the games when Paris won, and was also one of those that subsequently threatened to kill Paris.

Laodice's wrath

Laodice was beautiful and was extremely faithful to her husband Telephus. But Telephus had a child by her aunt Astyoche, despite the fact that Astyoche was twice his age. A later interpolation asserts that with Argiope he had Roma

Roma (mythology)

In traditional Roman religion, Roma was a female deity who personifed the city of Rome and more broadly, the Roman state. Her image appears on the base of the column of Antoninus Pius.-Problems in earliest attestation:...

, who gave her name to Rome.

Eurypylus

Telephus led his Mysian forces towards Troy in order to help his father-in-law King Priam

Priam

Priam was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon. Modern scholars derive his name from the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous".- Marriage and issue :...

. Telephus' son Eurypylus was supposed to succeed to the Mysian throne, but Achilles' son Neoptolemus killed Eurypylus at Troy.

Laodice at Troy

Telephus assured the Trojans that the Wooden Horse was not a threat, and convinced them to let the horse into Troy.

Laodice accompanied Telephus and Eurypylus to Troy, although Telephus did not fight. Laodice sneaked into Acamas' bed and she committed adultery. At the fall of Troy, Laodice was sucked into a chasm in the Earth.

As they set foot in Asia Minor, Helicaon forced Laodice to marry him and was going to drown Eurypylus, six-year-old son of Telephus and Laodice, in Xanthos' Lake. However, Telephus returned just in time to save his wife and son. Telephus decapitated Helicaon and had the latter's face engraved on all Mysian shields with an expression of terror and fear in his eyes. Yet other versions say that Laodice had married Helicaon

Helicaon

In Greek mythology Helicaon is the son of Antenor and Theano. His wife Laodice fell in love with Acamas....

. When Telephus came she tricked him into believing that the cattle handed down to him by his father Heracles had been stolen by Helicoan, and that she would exact revenge on behalf of Telephus if he would marry her. And so at night she stabbed Helicoan and afterwards married Telephus, which explains why she was punished by being sucked up into a hellish pit chasm in the earth.

Telephus met and fought with Achilles' son Neoptolemus (or Calchas), who had killed his own son Eurypylus. Neoptolemus gave Telephus a serious blow in the very same place that Achilles had, a wound which had never truly healed.

Telephus returns to Greece

Telephus fled back to Athens where the Heraclids were, and became General and Leader of the Heraclids a few years before the death of his grandmother Alcmene

Alcmene

In Greek mythology, Alcmene or Alcmena was the mother of Heracles.-Background:Alcmene was born to Electryon, the son of Perseus and Andromeda, and king of Tiryns and Mycenae or Medea in Argolis. Her mother was Anaxo, daughter of Alcaeus and Astydamia, daughter of Pelops and Hippodameia...

. He was the one who was there when she died.

When Telephus heard that the Trojan princess he had truly loved—Cassandra—was left alive after the fall of Troy, he went crazy and made an attack on Arcadia and Ithaca. However, he was defeated in a fight with Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. During that time Telephus killed many; his death toll included his own grandfather Aleus (father of his mother Auge), as well as his uncles, the sons of Aleus. Before they died, he told them: I am the son of Auge.

After that period Telephus traveled to Rhodes, where he met with Polyxo and Helen. Helen told him of all that had happened after the fall of Troy. He impregnated Helen but she was soon after killed by Polyxo, and so she died along with her unborn child by Telephus.

Telephus consequently plucked out his eyes and fled from Rhodes to Gibraltar; there he climbed to the top of the Pillars of Hercules, where he died of grief.

His last words were Father, take my soul.

It was said by Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

 that Telephus' father Heracles did take his son's soul up to Olympos. There, Telephus became Heracles' squire.

Another version has it that Telephus went to the Island of the Blessed, Elysian Fields, etc. after his death.

Telephus in the arts

Telephus features in Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

' The Assembly of the Achaeans and Euripides' Telephus.

The character Dicaeopolis in Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

' play The Acharnians

The Acharnians

The Acharnians is the third play - and the earliest of the eleven surviving plays - by the great Athenian playwright Aristophanes. It was produced in 425 BCE on behalf of the young dramatist by an associate, Callistratus, and it won first place at the Lenaia festival...

 takes on the role of Telephus for comic and metatheatrical effect.

The story of Telephus turning back the Greeks at Mysia is told in the newly discovered poem of Archilochus

Archilochus

Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...

 found in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri

Oxyrhynchus Papyri

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt . The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and...

(P.Oxy 4708).