Telephus

[3] Telephus' mother was Auge, the daughter of Aleus, the king of Tegea, a city in Arcadia, in the Peloponnese of mainland Greece.

[12] Seeking knowledge of his mother, Telephus consulted the Delphic oracle which directed him to Mysia,[13] where he was reunited with Auge and adopted by Teuthras.

[14] A surviving fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (sixth century BC),[15] representing perhaps the oldest tradition,[16] places Telephus' birth in Mysia.

In this telling Telephus' mother Auge had been received at the court of Teuthras in Mysia (possibly at the command of the gods) and raised by him as a daughter.

We are told this by the second-century traveler Pausanias, who goes on to say, perhaps drawing upon Hecataeus, that when Aleus discovered that Auge had given birth to Telephus, he had mother and child shut up in a wooden chest and cast adrift on the open sea.

The chest made its way from Arcadia to the Caicus river plain in Asia Minor, where the local king Teuthras married Auge.

[19] Sophocles, in the fifth century BC, wrote a tragedy Aleadae (The sons of Aleus), which apparently told the circumstances of Telephus' birth.

[20] The play is lost and only fragments now remain, but a declamation attributed to the fourth-century BC orator Alcidamas probably used Sophocles' Aleadae for one of its sources.

[29] Later accounts by the first-century BC Historian Diodorus Siculus and the 1st or second-century AD mythographer Apollodorus provide additional details and variations.

But in Diodorus' account, instead of being sold, along with his mother, to Teuthras, Telephus is abandoned by Auge "in some bushes", where he is suckled by a doe, and found by herdsmen.

When Telephus grows up, wishing to find his mother, he consults the oracle at Delphi, which sends him to king Teuthras in Mysia.

According to the mythographer Hyginus (whose account is apparently taken from an older tragic source, probably Sophocles' Mysians),[35] after Auge abandoned Telephus on Mount Parthenion[36] she fled to Mysia where, as in the Catalogue of Women, she became the adopted daughter (not wife) of Teuthras.

[37] When Telephus goes to Mysia on the instruction of the oracle, Teuthras promises him his kingdom and his daughter Auge in marriage if he would defeat his enemy Idas.

[40] Aristotle in the Poetics, in a reference to Telephus' appearance in a tragedy called Mysians, mentions "the man who came from Tegea to Mysia without speaking".

[42] The comic poet Alexis writes about a voracious dinner guest who like "Telephus in speechless silence sits, / Making but signs to those who ask him questions", presumably too intent on eating to converse.

Telephus consulted the oracle of Apollo which gave the famous reply ὁ τρώσας ἰάσεται ("your assailant will heal you").

[60] Orestes being held hostage by Telephus was already being illustrated on red-figure pottery possibly as early as the second quarter of the fifth century,[61] and the scene perhaps also appeared previously in Aeschylus' presentation of the story.

35)[63] and a bas-relief (c. first century BC) from Herculaneum (Naples, National Archaeological Museum 6591)[64] are interpreted as depicting Achilles healing Telephus with rust from his spear.

Pliny the Elder (first-century AD) describes paintings (undated) which depicted Achilles scraping rust from his spear into the wound of Telephus.

[66] The first literary references to the use of rust scraped from Achilles' spear as the healing agent for Telephus' wound are found in the first-century BC Roman poets Propertius and Ovid.

[75] Eurypylus led a large force of Mysians to fight on the side of Troy during the final stages of the Trojan War.

[84] The Amazon-like Hiera had already been portrayed, on horseback, leading the Mysian women into battle, on the second-century BC Telephus frieze of the Pergamon Altar.

A late sixth-century or early fifth-century Attic fragmentary red-figure calyx krater, attributed to Phintias (St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum ST1275) apparently depicted the battle between Telephus and Achilles.

It is presumed that Diomedes is attending to the fallen Thersander, and that the central part of the vase depicted Achilles wounding Telephus, with the aid of the god Dionysus.

According to Pausanias, the battle between the Telephus and Achilles at the Caicus river was also depicted on the West pediment of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea (finished c. 350–340 BC).

[115] Perhaps the earliest example, an Attic kylix cup (c. 470 BC) from Eastern Etruria (MFA 98.931) shows Telephus, with bandaged thigh, sitting alone on an altar holding two spears.

[116] An Attic pelike (c. 450 BC), from Vulci (British Museum E 382) shows Telephus, with bandaged thigh, sitting on an altar, holding a spear in his right hand, and the infant Orestes with his left arm.

35)[120] and a marble bas-relief, c. first century BC, from Herculaneum (Naples, National Archaeological Museum 6591) [121] show Achilles healing Telephus with rust from his spear.

Aeschylus wrote a play called Mysians which perhaps told the story of Telephus coming to Mysia and seeking purification for having killed his maternal uncles.

The late fifth-century poet Agathon, (probably the most well known tragedian after Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) wrote plays with titles Mysians and Telephus.

Heracles with the infant Telephus and deer, mid second century AD. Paris , Louvre MA 75. [ 1 ]
Heracles finds Telephus suckled by a deer, with Arkadia, Pan and a winged Virgo looking on, first century AD. Naples , National Archaeological Museum 9008. [ 4 ]
Marble statue of Hercules holding baby Telephus in his arms. Ancient Roman copy from a Greek original of 4th century BC. Found in the 16th century in Campo de' Fiori in Rome. Museo Chiaramonti, the Vatican
Achilles ; ancient Greek polychromatic pottery painting (dating to c. 300 BC)
Telephus seated on altar, with bandaged thigh, holding a spear and the infant Orestes. Detail from an Athenian red-figure pelike , c. 450 BC, British Museum E 382.
Neoptolemus killing Eurypylus Attica black-figure hydria by the Antimenes Painter , 550–500 BC, Martin von Wagner Museum L 309. [ 73 ]
Telephus threatens the infant Orestes, at Agamemnon's altar. Telephus frieze (panel 42), second century BC. Berlin , Antikensammlung T.I.71 and 72. [ 94 ]
Achilles (right) scrapes rust from his spear on the wound of the seated Telephus, c. first century BC. Marble bas-relief , from the House of the Relief of Telephus, Herculaneum , Naples , National Archaeological Museum 6591.
Scene from Aristophanes ' Women at the Thesmophoria , (733-755), lampooning the Euripidean Telephus holding Orestes hostage. Here, a man disguised as a woman kneels on a sacrificial altar, holding a "toddler" (wineskin "clothed" with children's shoes). The "mother" holds a wine jar ready to catch the "blood" of the slaughtered child. Bell krater from Apulia , c. 370 BC, Martin von Wagner Museum H 5697. [ 122 ]