In Greek mythology, Auge (;Dictionary of Name Pronunciation - Pronounce Auge ;Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, s.v.Stewart, p. 110.), was the daughter of Aleus the king of Tegea in Arcadia, and the virgin priestess of Athena Alea. She was also the mother of the hero Telephus by Heracles.
Auge had sex with Heracles (either willingly, or by force) and was made pregnant. When Aleus found this out, by various accounts, he ordered Auge drowned, or sold as a slave, or shut up in a wooden chest and thrown into the sea (similar to Princess Danaë of Argos, mother of Perseus). However, in all these accounts, she and her son Telephus end up at the court of the Mysian king Teuthras, where Auge becomes the wife (or the adopted daughter) of Teuthras, and Telephus becomes Teuthras’ adopted son and heir.
Family Auge was the daughter of Aleus, the grandson of Arcas, who was the son of Zeus and Callisto.For the genealogy see: Apollodorus, 3.8.2, 3.9.1; Pausanias, 8.4.1–2, 8.4.4, 8.4.8; Hyginus, Fabulae 99, 155, 162. Aleus was the king of Arcadia and eponym of Alea,Pausanias, 8.23.1. and was said to have been the founder of the cult of Athena Alea and the builder of Temple of Athena Alea at his capital of Tegea.Pausanias, 8.4.8, 8.45.4. According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Auge's mother was Neaera, the daughter of Pereus.Apollodorus, 3.9.1; compare with Pausanias, 8.4.6 which says that Neaera married Autolycus.
Mythology
From Arcadia to Mysia There were many versions of Auge's story.For general discussions see Hard, pp. 543–544; Gantz, 428–431. A surviving fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (6th c. BC),Hard, p. 544; Gantz, p. 428; Hesiod (Pseudo), Catalogue of Women fr. 165 (Merkelbach–West numbering) from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri XI 1359 fr. 1 (Most, pp. 184–187; Stewart, p. 110; Grenfell and Hunt, pp. 52–55). representing perhaps the oldest tradition,Stewart, p. 110. tells us that, Auge having arrived in Mysia (it doesn't say how), the gods appeared before king Teuthras and commanded him to receive her at his court in Mysia. So, according to this account, Teuthras raised Auge as a daughter,Compare with Hyginus, Fabulae 99, 100 which also have Auge adopted by Teuthras. and It was in Mysia that Heracles, while seeking the horses of Laomedon, seduced Auge and fathered Telephus.
All other accounts place the seduction (or in later accounts, the rape) of Auge by Heracles and Telephus' birth in Arcadia, in the Peloponnese of mainland Greece.Gantz, p. 428. The oldest such account (c. 490–480 BC), by the historian and geographer Hecataeus, says that Heracles used to have sex with Auge whenever he came to Tegea. We are told this by the 2nd century geographer Pausanias, who goes on to say, perhaps drawing upon Hecataeus, that when Aleus discovered that Auge had given birth to Telephus, he shut mother and child up in a chest and threw it into the sea. The chest made its way from Arcadia to the Caicus river in Asia Minor, where the local king Teuthras married Auge.Stewart, p. 110; Gantz, p. 428; Hecataeus, fr. 29 Jacoby (= Pausanias, 8.4.9). Strabo, 13.1.69, gives a similar account, which he attributes to Euripides (see below).
Sophocles, in the fifth century BC, wrote a tragedy Aleadae (The sons of Aleus), which told the story of Auge and Telephus.Lloyd-Jones, pp. 32–40 (frs. 77–89); Jebb, Headlam and Pearson, Vol. 1 pp. 46 ff. (frs. 77–89). The play is lost and only fragments now remain, but a declamation attributed to the fourth century BC orator Alcidamas probably used Sophocles' Aleadae for one of its sources.Gantz, pp. 428–429; Jebb, Headlam and Pearson, Vol. 1 pp. 46–47. According to Alcidamas, Auge's father Aleus had been warned by the Delphic oracle that if she had a son, then her son would kill Aleus' sons, so Aleus made Auge a priestess of Athena, telling her she must remain a virgin, on pain of death.Alcidamas, Odysseus 14-16 (Garagin and Woodruff, p. 286). Alcidamas is the only source for the oracle given to Aleus (see Jebb, Headlam and Pearson, Vol. 1, p. 47). For Auge as priestess of Athena see also, Euripides, Auge, test. iia (Hypothesis), Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 264–267; Apollodorus, 3.9.1; Pausanias, 8.45.4–7, 8.47.2 and 8.47.4; Moses of Chorene, Progymnasmata 3.3 (= Euripides, Auge test. iib, Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 266, 267). But Heracles passing through Tegea,Alcidamas, Odysseus 14 (Garagin and Woodruff, p. 286), says that Heracles stopped at Tegea on his way to Elis to make war on Augeas; Apollodorus, 2.7.2–4 and Diodorus Siculus, 4.33 say that he was on his way back from Elis and his subsequent campaign against Hippocoon in Sparta. being entertained by Aleus in the temple of Athena, became enamored of Auge and while drunk had sex with her.Alcidamas, Odysseus 15 (Garagin and Woodruff, p. 286). Euripides' Auge also has Heracles as the drunken guest of Aleus, see test. iia (Hypothesis), frs. 268, 272b (= 265 N) (Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 264–267, 270, 271, 274, 275; see also Webster, p. 240; Rosivach, pp. 43–44; Winnington-Ingram, p. 333). Aleus discovered that Auge was pregnant and gave her to Nauplius to be drowned.Alcidamas, Odysseus 15 (Garagin and Woodruff, p. 286). Pausanias, 8.48.7, and Diodorus Siculus, 4.33.8, also have Auge given to Nauplius to be drowned. Apollodorus, 3.9.1 simply says Auge was given to Nauplius be killed, but 2.7.4, says Auge was given to Nuaplius to be sold. Moses of Chorene, Progymnasmata 3.3 (= Euripides, Auge test. iib, Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 266, 267), without mentioning Nauplius, says that Aleus ordered Auge drowned, but that she was rescued from that fate by Heracles. Compare with Catreus handing over Aerope to Nauplius to be drowned at sea: Apollodorus, 3.2. But, on the way to the sea, Auge gave birth to Telephus on Mount Parthenion,Alcidamas, Odysseus 16 (Garagin and Woodruff, p. 286). See also Euripides, Telephus fr. 696, Collard and Cropp 2008b, pp. 194, 195, which has Telephus say he was born on Mount Parthenion, and Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 70, which calls Parthenion "Auge's holy hill". and according to Alcidamas, Nauplius, ignoring his orders, sold mother and child to the childless Mysian king Teuthras, who married Auge and adopted Telephus.Compare with Diodorus Siculus, 4.33.10, where Nauplius gives Auge to Carians who in turn give her to Teuthras, and Apollodorus, 2.7.4, 3.9.1 where Nauplius gives her (directly?) to Teuthras. Alcidamas' version of the story must have diverged from Sophocles in at least this last respect. For, rather than the infant Telephus being sold to Teuthras, as in Alcidamas, an Aleadae fragment seems to insure that in the Sophoclean play, as in many later accounts (see below), the new-born Telephus was instead abandoned on Mount Parthenion, where he is suckled by a deer.Gantz, p. 429; Huys, p. 293; Jebb, Headlam and Pearson, Vol. 1 p. 47; Sophocles, Aleadae fr. 89 (Lloyd-Jones, p. 40, 41).
Euripides wrote a play Auge (408 BC?) which dealt with her story. The play is lost, but a summary of the plot can be pieced together from various later sources, in particular a narrative summary, given by the Armenian historian Moses of Chorene.Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 259–277; Huys, pp. 81–82; Gantz, pp. 429–430; Webster, pp. 238–240. A drunken Heracles,Euripides, Auge fr. 272b (= 265 N), Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 274, 275, has Heracles say: "As it is, wine made me lose control. I admit I wronged you, but the wrong was not intentional." during a festival of Athena, rapes "Athena's priestess Auge, daughter of Aleus, as she conducted the dances during the nocturnal rites."Euripides, Auge test. iib, Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 266, 267 (= Moses of Chorene, Progymnasmata 3.3). Pompeian frescoes (which show Auge being raped while washing clothing) and Pausanias, 8.47.4, place the rape at a spring, and this version of events may reflect Euripides' Auge. See Collard and Cropp 2008a. p. 262, Euripides, Auge test. iia (Hypothesis), Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 264, 265, with n. 1; Rosivach, p. 44 with n. 126; Kerényi, p. 338). Auge gives birth secretly in Athena's temple at Tegea, and hides the new-born child there.Collard and Cropp 2008a, p. 260; test. iii, Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 266, 267 (= Tzetzes On Aristophanes, Frogs 1080); fr. 266, Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 270, 271 (= Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 7.3.23.4). See also Euripides' Telephus, fr. 696, which has Telephus say that Auge "bore me secretly" (Collard and Cropp 2008b, pp. 194, 195; cf. Page, pp. 130, 131). The child is discovered, and Aleus orders Telephus exposed and Auge to be drowned, but Heracles returns and apparently saves the pair from immediate death, and the play perhaps ended with the assurance (from Athena to Heracles?) that Auge and Telephus would be wife and son to Teuthras.Collard and Cropp 2018a, p. 261; Gantz, p. 430; Huys, p. 82; Webster, p. 240; Euripides, Auge test. iib, Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 266, 267 (= Moses of Chorene, Progymnasmata 3.3).
Strabo, gives a version of the story similar to Pausanias', saying that, after discovering "her ruin by Heracles", Aleus put Auge and Telephus into a chest and cast it into the sea, that it washed up at the mouth of the Caicus, and that Teuthras married Auge, and adopted Telephus.See Strabo, 13.1.69, which attributes this to Euripides. If so then this would have presumably been in Euripide's Auge (see Gantz, p. 429; Webster, p. 238) however Strabo's attribution may be erroneous (see Collard and Cropp 2008a, p. 261); see also 12.8.2, 12.8.4.
The later accounts of the 1st century BC Historian Diodorus Siculus and the 1st or 2nd century AD mythographer Apollodorus add additional details, as well as provide slight variations.Gantz, p. 430. Diodorus, adds that Aleus did not believe Auge when she told him that Heracles was the father.Diodorus Siculus, 4.33.8. As in Alcidamas, Diodorus says that Aleus gave Auge to Nauplius to be drowned and that Auge gave birth to Telephus near Mount Parthenion.Diodorus Siculus, 4.33.8–9. But instead of selling Auge, as in Alkidamas, according to Diodorus, Nauplius gave Auge to "some Carians" who took her to Mysia and gave her to Teuthras.Diodorus Siculus, 4.33.10. According to Apollordorus, Heracles did not know that Auge was the daughter of Aleus when he had sex with her.Apollodorus, 2.7.4. As in Euripides' Auge, Apollodorus says that Auge delivered her baby secretly in Athena's temple, and hid it there.Apollodorus, 2.7.4, 3.9.1. Apollodorus adds that an ensuing famine, was declared by an oracle to be the result of some impiety in the temple, and a search of the temple caused Auge to be found out.Apollodorus, 3.9.1. This may also have been in Euripides, Auge, see fr. 267 (Collard and Cropp 2008a, pp. 260, 270, 271): "A city that is sick is clever at seeking out errors", which may refer to a search for the cause of the famine. As in Sophocles' account, Apollodorus says that Aleus gave Auge to Nauplius to be disposed of. In one place Apollodorus says that Aleus gave Nauplius Auge "to sell far away in a foreign land",Apollodorus, 2.7.4. while in another he says "to be put to death".Apollodorus, 3.9.1. But in either case, Nauplius instead gave Auge to Teuthras who married her.
Telephus