Αυγη
The daughter of Aleus, the king of the city of Tegea, and Neaera, the daughter of Pereus (Table 9). Her legend is linked to the Heracles cycle and, through Telephus, to that of Troy. One of the oldest verified versions described Auge as living at the court of Laomedon, the king of Troy, where she was loved by Heracles when the hero came to capture the city. From there, for some unknown reason, she went to the court of Teuthras, the king of Mysia. But the most common version, which goes back to the Auge of Euripides as well as the Mysians and the Aleades of Sophocles is as follows.
An oracle warned Aleus that his daughter would have a son who would kill his uncles (the Aleades) and reign in their stead. The king accordingly dedicated his daughter to the goddess Athena and forbade her to marry, on pain of death, but Heracles, who was passing through Tegea on his way to Elis to make war on Augias, was welcomed by Aleus. While he was there, he became drunk at a large banquet and violated Auge (who he did not know was the king's daughter). The rape took place either in the shrine of Athena or beside a neighboring stream. When the king learned that his daughter was pregnant he wanted to kill her, and he either put Auge and her child in a chest which he cast into the sea or entrusted them to Nauplius, the helmsman, with orders to throw them into the sea. Nauplius, as he had done before for Aerope and her sister, saved the girl and her baby son. He sold them both to slave merchants who carried them off to Mysia. The king of the country, who was childless, married Auge and adopted her little son Telephus.
Another version says that Auge was sold before her son was born and that he stayed in Arcadia, where he had been put out to die on a mountain, and was suckled by a doe. Later, after taking the advice of the Delphic oracle, Telephus came to the court of Teuthras in Mysia and met his mother again.
{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}
Table of Sources:
- Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 11, 1329
- Apollod. Bibl. 2, 7, 4ff.; 3, 9, 1
- Diod. Sic. 4, 33
- Strabo. 13, 1, 69; p. 615
- Paus. 8, 4, 8ff.; 8, 47, 2; 8, 48, 7; 10, 28, 8
- Hyg. Fab. 99; 100; 101; 162; 252
- Tzetzes on Lyc. Alex. 206
- Sophocles, Aleades, Mysians and Telephus (lost tragedies, Jebb-Pearson, I, p. 46; II, p. 70; II, p. 220)
- Euripides, Auge, Telephus and Mysians (lost tragedies, Nauck TGF, edn 2, pp. 436ff.; 579ff.; and 531)
- Alcidamas, Odysseus 14-16 (Radermacher, Artium Scriptores p. 144)
- Anth. Pal. 3, 2
- See also Telephus.