Aleus, son of Apheidas, was king of Tegea and built there the ancient sanctuary of Athena Alea, making the city the capital of his kingdom.1
In the Arcadian stemma Aleus is the son of Apheidas, himself a son of Arcas. Where Azan had a son Cleitor and Elatus had five sons — Aepytus, Pereus, Cyllen, Ischys, and Stymphalus — Apheidas had this single named son, so the Tegean line ran beside the broader house of Elatus.2
Apollodorus sets him in the same stem: Apheidas had a son Aleus and a daughter Stheneboea, who was given in marriage to Proetus, while Elatus and Apheidas divided Arcadia between them and Elatus held the greater power. Thus the cousin-lines of Tegea and the Elatids ran side by side through the highlands.3
Aleus made Tegea the capital of his kingdom and built there the old sanctuary of Athena Alea. Long after, the Tegeans raised beside it a great temple worth the seeing, but the first shrine of the goddess was the work of Aleus.4
His children are differently counted. Apollodorus gives him, by Neaera daughter of Pereus, a daughter Auge and two sons, Cepheus and Lycurgus, and adds that Auge held the priesthood of Athena; Pausanias instead lists three sons — Lycurgus, Amphidamas, and Cepheus — together with Auge; and Hyginus names the mother of Amphidamas and Cepheus not Neaera but Cleobule. Amphidamas's place is the sharpest dispute: Pausanias and Hyginus make him a son of Aleus, but Apollodorus sets him a generation lower, among the sons of Lycurgus and so a grandson of the king.5
The darkest thread of his house runs through his daughter Auge, priestess of the goddess he had enshrined. Passing through Tegea, Heracles debauched her, not knowing whose daughter she was; she bore her child in secret and hid it within Athena's precinct. When pestilence wasted the land, Aleus entered the sanctuary, discovered his daughter's motherhood, and exposed the infant — the boy Telephus, whom Heracles had fathered on Auge.6
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