Son of Telamon by the captive Hesione and half-brother of Ajax, the finest archer among the Achaeans, who fought from behind his brother's shield at Troy.1
His birth lies in the spoils of the first Troy. Apollodorus tells how Telamon, joining Heracles' expedition against Laomedon, received as his prize Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, and by her had a son, Teucer — so the archer's mother was a Trojan princess and his father a sacker of the city he would help besiege again. Apollodorus also sets him among the wooers of Helen, where Ajax and Teucer stand named together as the sons of Telamon. Hyginus, numbering the ships that sailed against Troy, lists him as Ajax's brother by Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, bringing twelve ships.2
In Homer's war Teucer is the bow that fights from cover. Best of all the Achaeans with the bow and no mean spearman besides, he would dart out from under the broad shield of Aias son of Telamon, his half-brother begotten of one father, loose his arrow into the press, then duck back like a child to its mother while Aias screened him again. Agamemnon found him so and urged him on, and Teucer answered that of himself he was eager, lying in wait with his bow to bring the Trojans down. By that craft he laid low man after man — Aretaon, Imbrius son of Mentor, Prothoön and Periphetes — and shore through the enemy ranks.3
Twice his aim against Hector came to nothing, each time by a god's hand. When he loosed a shaft straight at Hector the arrow missed and felled Gorgythion in his stead, and a second flew wide when Apollo turned the dart, so that it struck down Archeptolemus, Hector's charioteer, instead. Later, as Teucer fitted a fresh arrow to bring Hector low by the ships, Zeus snapped the well-twisted string upon his bow, the shaft was turned aside, and the weapon fell from his hand — and Teucer cried to his brother that a god was bringing to naught the counsels of their battle.4
His mastery shows again in the games for the dead. At the funeral of Patroclus, Teucer drew the first lot in the archery match against Meriones but, forgetting to vow a hecatomb to Apollo, only cut the cord that tethered the dove; Meriones then snatched up the bow and shot the bird itself in flight. In the games held for Achilles, Apollodorus records, it was Teucer who carried off the contest in archery.5
His ending lies west of Troy. Pausanias, reasoning that Teucer must have been driven from his native city on his return, says it was Telamon who expelled him, so that the archer founded a second Salamis on Cyprus; and elsewhere he traces an Athenian pedigree back to Teucer and the daughter of Cinyras, the marriage by which he fathered the line that ruled the island. Teucer first defended himself before Telamon, urging that he was guiltless in the matter of the death of Ajax — the nested episode on Teucer to Cyprus tells the plea, the expulsion, and the second founding in full.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
