Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Auge, daughter of Aleus of Tegea (Arcadian), served as priestess of Athena. Heracles, passing through Arcadia, lay with her (in Athena’s sanctuary in some tellings). When her pregnancy was discovered, Aleus—warned by an oracle that his daughter’s son would kill his sons—gave Auge to Nauplius to drown or sell. Instead she bore Telephus on Mount Parthenium (or at the seaside); the infant was exposed and suckled by a doe (*elaphos*—whence folk etymology of his name). Shepherds (or Corythus) reared him. Auge herself was sold or given to Teuthras, king of Mysia (Teuthrania), who made her his wife or ward. Grown Telephus consulted Delphi to find his parents; the oracle sent him to Mysia. There he helped Teuthras against enemies (Idas, or Idas’s allies; or the usurper), received Auge in marriage as reward—mother and son unrecognized—until Athena or a serpent or an oracle stopped the incestuous bed. Recognition followed; Telephus became Teuthras’s heir and king of Mysia. He later married a Trojan princess (Astyoche or Laodice, Priam’s kin) in some genealogies, which explains his refusal to fight the Achaeans as an enemy once healed. The fuller Arcadian–Mysian arc thus runs: Heracles’s son exposed and doe-nursed, mother shipped to Asia, son restored as king—before the Achaeans ever mistake Mysia for Troy and Achilles’ spear writes the next chapter (04/008).