Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When Heracles sacked Troy and killed Laomedon, he gave Laomedon’s daughter Hesione to Telamon, who had been first over the wall (or among the foremost). Telamon took her home to Salamis. By Hesione he fathered Teucer; by his legitimate wife Periboea (Eriboea) he had already (or also) Ajax. Teucer is thus Ajax’s half-brother: Trojan princess for mother, Aeacid for father—blood of both sides of the later war. In the *Iliad* Teucer fights as the master archer sheltered by Ajax’s tower-shield, called a bastard in the social sense of secondary son. Sophocles’ *Ajax* makes him the loyal advocate for burial rights after Ajax’s suicide, abused by the Atreidae as a barbarian’s child and as lesser kin. After the war, tradition drives Teucer from Salamis (Telamon’s anger over Ajax’s death) to found Salamis in Cyprus. This brief entry records only the birth-knot: Hesione’s captivity-marriage to Telamon produces the archer who will stand between Troy’s blood and the Achaean camp—kin to Priam’s house and to Achilles’ cousin Ajax at once.