Teleboæ, or Teleboes, a people of Ætolia, called also Taphians; some of whom left their native country, and settled in the island of Capreæ. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 7, li. 715. See: [Taphiæ].
Teleboas, a son of Ixion and the cloud. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 11.——A son of Lycaon. Apollodorus.
Teleboides, islands opposite Leucadia. Pliny, bk. 4, ch. 12.
Telĕcles, or Telĕclus, a Lacedæmonian king of the family of the Agidæ, who reigned 40 years, B.C. 813. Herodotus, bk. 7, ch. 205.—Pausanias, bk. 3, ch. 2.——A philosopher, disciple of Lacidas, B.C. 214.——A Milesian.
Teleclīdes, an Athenian comic poet in the age of Pericles, one of whose plays, called the Amphictyon, is mentioned by ancient authors. Plutarch, Nicias.—Athenæus.
Tēlĕgŏnus, a son of Ulysses and Circe, born in the island of Ææa, where he was educated. When arrived to the years of manhood, he went to Ithaca to make himself known to his father, but he was shipwrecked on the coast, and, being destitute of provisions, he plundered some of the inhabitants of the island. Ulysses and Telemachus came to defend the property of their subjects against this unknown invader; a quarrel arose, and Telegonus killed his father without knowing who he was. He afterwards returned to his native country, and, according to Hyginus, he carried thither his father’s body, where it was buried. Telemachus and Penelope also accompanied him in his return, and soon after the nuptials of Telegonus and Penelope were celebrated by order of Minerva. Penelope had by Telegonus a son called Italus, who gave his name to Italy. Telegonus founded Tusculum and Tibur or Præneste, in Italy, and, according to some, he left one daughter called Mamilia, from whom the patrician family of the Mamilii at Rome were descended. Horace, bk. 3, ode 29, li. 8.—Ovid, Fasti, bks. 3 & 4. Tristia, bk. 1, poem 1.—Plutarch, Parallela minora.—Hyginus, fable 12.—Diodorus, bk. 7.——A son of Proteus, killed by Hercules. Apollodorus.——A king of Egypt, who married Io after she had been restored to her original form by Jupiter. Apollodorus.
Tēlĕmăchus, a son of Ulysses and Penelope. He was still in the cradle when his father went with the rest of the Greeks to the Trojan war. At the end of this celebrated war, Telemachus, anxious to see his father, went to seek him, and as the place of his residence, and the cause of his long absence, were then unknown, he visited the court of Menelaus and Nestor to obtain information. He afterwards returned to Ithaca, where the suitors of his mother Penelope had conspired to murder him; but he avoided their snares, and by means of Minerva, he discovered his father, who had arrived in the island two days before him, and was then in the house of Eumæus. With this faithful servant and Ulysses, Telemachus concerted how to deliver his mother from the importunities of her suitors, and it was effected with success. After the death of his father, Telemachus went to the island of Ææa, where he married Circe, or, according to others, Cassiphone the daughter of Circe, by whom he had a son called Latinus. He some time after had the misfortune to kill his mother-in-law Circe, and fled to Italy, where he founded Clusium. Telemachus was accompanied in his visit to Nestor and Menelaus by the goddess of wisdom, under the form of Mentor. It is said that, when a child, Telemachus fell into the sea, and that a dolphin brought him safe to shore, after he had remained some time under water. From this circumstance Ulysses had the figure of a dolphin engraved on the seal which he wore on his ring. Hyginus, fables 95 & 125.—Ovid, Heroides, poem 1, li. 98.—Horace, bk. 1, ltr. 7, li. 41.—Homer, Odyssey, bk. 2, &c.—Lycophron, Alexandra.
Telĕmus, a Cyclops who was acquainted with futurity. He foretold to Polyphemus all the evils which he some time after suffered from Ulysses. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 13, li. 771.
Telephassa, the mother of Cadmus, Phœnix, and Cilix by Agenor. She died in Thrace, as she was seeking her daughter Europa, whom Jupiter had carried away. Apollodorus, bk. 3, chs. 1 & 4.
Tĕlĕphus, a king of Mysia, son of Hercules and Auge the daughter of Aleus. He was exposed as soon as born on mount Parthenius, but his life was preserved by a goat, and by some shepherds. According to Apollodorus, he was exposed, not on a mountain, but in the temple of Minerva, at Tegea, or, according to a tradition mentioned by Pausanias, he was left to the mercy of the waves with his mother, by the cruelty of Aleus, and carried by the winds to the mouth of the Caycus, where he was found by Teuthras the king of the country, who married, or rather adopted as his daughter, Auge, and educated her son. Some, however, suppose that Auge fled to Teuthras to avoid the anger of her father, on account of her amour with Hercules. Yet others declare that Aleus gave her to Nauplius to be [♦]severely punished for her incontinence, and that Nauplius, unwilling to injure her, sent her to Teuthras king of Bithynia, by whom she was adopted. Telephus, according to the more received opinions, was ignorant of his origin, and he was ordered by the oracle, if he wished to know his parents, to go to Mysia. Obedient to this injunction, he came to Mysia, where Teuthras offered him his crown, and his adopted daughter Auge in marriage, if he would deliver his country from the hostilities of Idas the son of Aphareus. Telephus readily complied, and at the head of the Mysians, he soon routed the enemy, and received the promised reward. As he was going to unite himself to Auge, the sudden appearance of an enormous serpent separated the two lovers; Auge implored the assistance of Hercules, and was soon informed by the god that Telephus was her own son. When this was known, the nuptials were not celebrated, and Telephus some time after married one of the daughters of king Priam. As one of the sons of the Trojan monarch, Telephus prepared to assist Priam against the Greeks, and with heroic valour he attacked them when they had landed on his coast. The carnage was great, and Telephus was victorious, had not Bacchus, who protected the Greeks, suddenly raised a vine from the earth, which entangled the feet of the monarch, and laid him flat on the ground. Achilles immediately rushed upon him, and wounded him so severely, that he was carried away from the battle. The wound was mortal, but Telephus was informed by the oracle, that he alone who had inflicted it could totally cure it. Upon this, applications were made to Achilles, but in vain; the hero observed that he was no physician, till Ulysses, who knew that Troy could not be taken without the assistance of one of the sons of Hercules, and who wished to make Telephus the friend of the Greeks, persuaded Achilles to obey the directions of the oracle. Achilles consented, and as the weapon which had given the wound could alone cure it, the hero scraped the rust from the point of his spear, and, by applying it to the sore, gave it immediate relief. It is said that Telephus showed himself so grateful to the Greeks, that he accompanied them to the Trojan war, and fought with them against his father-in-law. Hyginus, fable 101.—Pausanias, bk. 8, ch. 48.—Apollodorus, bk. 2, ch. 7, &c.—Ælian, Varia Historia, bk. 12, ch. 42.—Diodorus, bk. 4.—Ovid, Fasti, bk. 1, poem 1, &c.—Philostratus, Heroicus.—Pliny.——A friend of Horace, remarkable for his beauty and the elegance of his person. He was the favourite of Lydia the mistress of Horace, &c. Horace, bk. 1, ode 12; bk. 4, ode 11, li. 21.——A slave who conspired against Augustus. Suetonius, Augustus.——Lucius Verus, wrote a book on the rhetoric of Homer, as also a comparison of that poet with Plato, and other treatises, all lost.