Telephus. Telephus was the son of Auge and Heracles. After bearing him on Mt Parthenius, she exposed her son; but a hind (ἔλαφος, elephos) suckled him. When he reached adulthood, he went in search of his mother. The Delphic Oracle advised he go to Mysia. A nearly disastrous episode saw Auge and Telephus nearly enter an incestuous marriage ignorantly. Auge who intended to remain faithful to the memory of Heracles nearly murdered her arranged new bridegroom, Telephus, but was thwarted by a divinely sent serpent who blocked the incest and the matricide. Telephus remained at Mysia as king.



The twenty-year Achaean campaign against Troy included a particular pair of encounters with the king of the Mysians, Telephus. In the first of these, the commanders Agamemnon and Achilles (ignorant of the way to or, indeed, the very location of Troy) assaulted Mysia thinking, erroneously, that they were attacking Priam's city. Telephus was wounded in the assault by Achilles who wielded Chiron's spear, a weapon so powerful that only the mighty son of Thetis could manage. After sacking Mysia, the Achaeans returned to Argos.

Then, in the second encounter eight years into the campaign, still unknowing how to locate Troy and still abiding in Aulis, Agamemnon received Telephus himself as a suppliant suffering still from the festering wound inflicted by Achilles years before. Apollo had informed Telephus that he could be healed only by the person who had inflicted the wound. In exchange for the healing, Telephus would show the way to Troy.

Initially rejected by Agamemnon in his supplication, Telephus on the advice of Clytemnestra abducted baby Orestes from his cradle and threatened to murder the child unless the Achaeans healed his wound.

Incidentally, Telephus' offer to assist them toward Troy would prove useless, because his supplication and healing anteceded the episode of Iphigenia's expiation of Artemis' wrath.

When Achilles healed Telephus, he scraped into the wound rust from the very spearhead that once had wounded the Mysian.