Telegonus1.0000_Reid

Telegonus.
     The offspring of Odysseus and Circe, or of Odysseus and Calypso by a variant account. Homer does not mention Telegonus, and most treatments assume that the child was born after Odysseus' forward voyage took him away from Aiaia and on to Calypso.
     The Telegonus myth involves his rearing by Circe on Aiaia and his eventual quest to know his father. Upon his arrival in Ithaca, which Telegonus may not have recognized as his father's homeland, he was driven to theft by abject hunger. In defense of his property, Odysseus and Telemachus pursued the rustler and engaged Telegonus in armed confrontation. Armed with a spear tipped by a sting-ray's barb (i.e. "death from the sea" prophesied by Teiresias?), Telegonus unwittingly killed his father, Odysseus, in a fight.
     Recognition of his father brought deep grief upon Telegonus, who allied with Penelope and Telemachus to journey together with the corpse to Aiaia for funerary rites. Ancient authors have Penelope marry Telegonus, and Circe marry Telemachus. Some sources specify that the offspring of Penelope and Telegonus was Italus, the founder of Tusculum and Praeneste near Rome. Others state that Circe immortalized Telegonus and Penelope and sent them to the Isles of the Blest.
     
     Further Reference: Simpson, Michael. 1976. Gods and Heroes of the Greeks: the Library of Apollodorus. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Esp. note on Epit. 7.37.

Also: J.G. Frazer Apollodorus: the Library 2.303-305, on Epit. 7.36.

Madeline Miller adapts the Telegonus myth with intriguing variety:
Ipsa. 2018. Circe. New York: Little, Brown, et co. Chapters 18 - 27 treat Telegonus from birth to Circe's death.