Telephus was a hero of Greek mythology, the son of Heracles and Auge, the daughter of King Aleus of Tegea in Arcadia. Adopted by Teuthras, king of Mysia in Asia Minor, he succeeded him as king. He is best known for the episode in which the Greeks, sailing for Troy, mistakenly landed in Mysia, and Telephus was wounded in the thigh by Achilles' spear; the wound would not heal until Achilles, advised by an oracle, cured it with rust scraped from the same spear, after which Telephus guided the Greek fleet to Troy. He was the father of Eurypylus, who fought for the Trojans and was slain by Neoptolemus.
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I.Birth to Adulthood
Telephus was the son of the hero Heracles and Auge, the daughter of King Aleus of Tegea, who served as a priestess of Athena. Heracles seduced (in some versions raped) Auge, and her father Aleus, on discovering the birth, sought to dispose of both mother and child.
The ancient sources give markedly different accounts of how Telephus reached Mysia. In some, Aleus cast Auge and the infant out to sea in a chest, or sent Auge away to be sold abroad, so that she came to Teuthras, king of Mysia, who made her his wife. In others, the infant was abandoned on Mount Parthenion, where he was suckled by a deer and reared by shepherds; grown to manhood, he consulted the Delphic oracle, which sent him to Mysia, where he was reunited with his mother and adopted by Teuthras.
These variants are drawn from a wide spread of authors and works, including the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Hecataeus, the tragedians Sophocles (Aleadae) and Euripides (Auge), Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Apollodorus, and Hyginus.
II.The Silence of Telephus
According to one tradition, Telephus killed his maternal uncles, the sons of Aleus, in fulfillment of an oracle. The bloodshed brought religious pollution that required him to remain silent until he was purified.
This motif became proverbial: Aristotle referred to "the man who came from Tegea to Mysia without speaking," and comic poets alluded to the silent Telephus as a figure of speech.
III.King in Mysia
When the Greek expedition first set sail for Troy, they mistakenly landed in Mysia and began to ravage it, believing it to be the Troad. Telephus, now king, routed the invaders and drove them back to their ships, killing Thersander, but in his pursuit he was tripped by a vine and wounded in the thigh by the spear of Achilles.
The wound would not heal. The oracle of Apollo declared "ho trōsas iasetai" — "he who wounded shall heal." Telephus therefore made his way to Argos (in some accounts in the disguise of a beggar) and persuaded Achilles to cure him; Achilles healed the wound with rust scraped from the same Pelian spear that had inflicted it. In return, Telephus agreed to guide the Greek fleet to Troy.
The episode is attested across many works, among them the Cypria, Pindar, lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as Pliny the Elder's notices of paintings, Etruscan mirrors and reliefs, and the detailed prose accounts of Apollodorus and Hyginus.
IV.Wives and Offspring
Telephus' best-known son was Eurypylus, borne by Astyoche, a sister of Priam; Eurypylus led a contingent to fight for the Trojans and was killed by Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.
Various authors give Telephus other wives, including Laodice (a daughter of Priam), Agriope (a daughter of Teuthras), and Hiera, a warrior queen. Later, especially Italian, traditions made Telephus an ancestor of legendary founders such as Tarchon and Tyrsenus of the Etruscans, and connected him with Roma, the eponym of Rome.
V.Iconography
More than a hundred representations of Telephus are catalogued in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, most of them dating from the 4th century BC onward. The most popular scenes show Telephus suckled by the deer, taking the infant Orestes hostage at Agamemnon's altar, and his wounding and healing by Achilles.
The grandest surviving image is the Telephus frieze of the Pergamon Altar (c. 180–156 BC), a roughly 60-metre frieze of some seventy-four marble panels narrating his life from before his birth through to his death and heroization, including his discovery as an abandoned child, the battles in Mysia, and the wounding and healing.
Smaller works likewise favor key moments: the infant suckled by a deer appears on East-Ionian engraved gems (c. 480 BC) and on coins of Tegea (c. 370 BC); the wounding by Achilles is shown on a late 6th-century Attic red-figure calyx krater and on the west pediment of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea (finished c. 350–340 BC); the refuge at Agamemnon's altar, often with Orestes as hostage, recurs in Attic vase painting; and the healing by spear-rust survives on an Etruscan bronze mirror and a marble relief from Herculaneum.
VI.Tragic Tradition
Telephus was a favored subject of Greek tragedy. Aristotle counted him among the heroes whose families furnished the best tragic plots. Aeschylus wrote a Mysians and a Telephus; Sophocles composed at least four related plays — Aleadae, Mysians, Telephus, and Eurypylus.
Euripides treated the story in his Auge and his Telephus (438 BC), the latter famous for dramatizing the hero's appearance as a ragged beggar and his seizure of the infant Orestes as a hostage. Aristophanes repeatedly parodied Euripides' Telephus, notably in the Acharnians and the Thesmophoriazusae.
Many later dramatists also wrote on the theme, among them Agathon, Iophon, Cleophon, Moschion, Aphareus, and the Hellenistic poet Nicomachus.
VII.Pergamon and Cult
Telephus was venerated as the mythical founder of Pergamon and the ancestor of its ruling Attalid dynasty (from 241 BC). The Pergamenes called themselves "Telephidai," the descendants of Telephus, and traced their origins back through him to Arcadia.
He received hero cult at Pergamon, where worshippers sang hymns and made offerings to him. He was also honored at Mount Parthenion in Arcadia, the site of his exposure and rescue, and at Tegea, where he featured on the pediment of the Temple of Athena Alea.