Auge, daughter of Aleus, king of Tegea, was ravished by Heracles and bore him Telephus; for the offence her father cast her out of the land, and in the end she came to Teuthras of Mysia.1
Her place in the house is fixed by both the chief genealogists. Apollodorus has Aleus father, by Neaera daughter of Pereus, a daughter Auge and two sons, Cepheus and Lycurgus, and adds that Auge held the priesthood of Athena at Tegea. Pausanias lists the children of Aleus as the sons Lycurgus, Amphidamas, and Cepheus, and the daughter Auge — so that the two accounts agree on her father and on her brothers Lycurgus and Cepheus, and differ only over whether Amphidamas belonged to her own generation.2
Heracles, passing by Tegea, debauched Auge — not knowing her, says Apollodorus, to be a daughter of Aleus. Pausanias reports the same union, citing Hecataeus that she used to lie with Heracles when he came to Tegea, and notes that he was shown the spot at a Tegean fountain where it happened, a setting differing from Hecataeus's own account. From that union came her one child, the boy who would be called Telephus; elsewhere Apollodorus sets it in his roll of Heracles' offspring — 'by Auge, daughter of Aleus, he had Telephus.'3
On where she gave birth and what became of the child the sources split, and the variants are not to be flattened. In Apollodorus she brought the babe forth secretly and hid it in the precinct of Athena; when the land was wasted barren, Aleus entered the precinct, discovered her shame, and exposed the infant on Mount Parthenius, where a doe that had just dropped her fawn gave it suck, and shepherds named it Telephus. Hyginus instead has Auge bear the child on Mount Parthenius itself and expose him there to a doe, the boy fleeing his grandfather's wrath only afterward.4
Pausanias preserves two rival Tegean tellings side by side. By one, Aleus handed Auge to Nauplius with the order to drown her in the sea, and as she was being led along she fell upon her knees and there gave birth to her son — the cause, he says, of the Tegean shrine of Eileithyia 'Auge on her knees.' By the other, she was brought to bed without her father's knowledge and Telephus was exposed on Mount Parthenius, the abandoned child suckled by a deer.5
The manner of her casting-out likewise divides the witnesses, all of whom send her in the end to Mysia. Apollodorus has Aleus deliver her to Nauplius, son of Poseidon, to be sold far away — or, in the other telling, to be put to death — and Nauplius pass her to Teuthras, prince of Teuthrania, who made her his wife. Pausanias, citing Hecataeus, drops Nauplius entirely: Aleus shut her with her infant in a chest and sent it out to sea, until she came to Teuthras, lord of the Caïcus plain, who fell in love with her and married her — and the tomb of Auge, he adds, still stood at Pergamon above the Caïcus. Hyginus makes Teuthras not her husband but the childless king who took the fugitive Auge as an adopted daughter.6
Hyginus alone carries the union to its near-tragic close. When Telephus, grown and sent by an oracle, came to Mysia seeking his mother, Teuthras promised him in marriage his adopted daughter — Auge, the stranger's own unrecognized son set against his mother. Loyal to the absent Heracles, Auge drew a sword to kill the suitor in her chamber; but by the gods' will a serpent of huge size glided between them, and at the sight she dropped the blade and cried out to Heracles, her ravisher, for help — and by that cry Telephus knew his mother, and the marriage was undone.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
