REDISCOVERING THE LOST EPILOGUE TO HOMER’S

ODYSSEY:

THE TELEGONY
EDITED & WITH INTRODUCTION BY D. M. SMITH
 Works by D. M. Smith
Munley Priory: A Gothic Story
The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer’s Iliad
The Telegony: Rediscovering the Lost Epilogue to Homer’s Odyssey

The Troy Myth in Medieval Britain

I. John Lydgate’s Troy Book: A Middle English Iliad
II. The Seege of Troye & The Rawlinson Prose Siege of Troy
III. The Laud Troy Book: The Forgotten Troy Romance
Copyright D. M. Smith 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
being imposed by the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN: 9798629652120

Cover illustration: Tiresias Appears to Odysseus (c. 1780-85) by Johann Heinrich

Füssli.
To my mother,

for making the effort to read every one of my

increasingly niche publications
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
A Note on the Sources
CHRONOLOGY
I: THESPROTIS
Thesprotis
The Stables of King Augeas
Trophonius and Agamedes
The Command of Tiresias
Odysseus in Epirus
Callidice
Poliporthes
The Grave of Penelope
The Adultery of Penelope
Pan
The Tower of Hals
Evippe
The Judgement of Neoptolemus
Odysseus in Italy
II: TELEGONY
Telegony
The Sons of Odysseus
Auson
Latinus
Nausithous
Telegonus
Rhomus, Anteias, and Ardeas
 Telegonus in Italy
The Ravaging of Ithaca
The Tempest
The Wounding of Odysseus
The Spear of Telegonus
The Stingray
The Prophecy of Tiresias
Odysseus and the Heron
The Return to Aeaea
The Islands of the Blessed
Latinus and Italus
Cassiphone
The Prophecy of Cassandra
The Dream of Odysseus
III: THE MEDIEVAL TELEGONY
Excerpt from John Gower’s Confessio Amantis
Excerpt from John Lydgate’s Troy Book
IV: THE VOYAGE OF TELEGONUS
The Voyage of Telegonus
APPENDIX
The Children of Odysseus
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 INTRODUCTION

I first read Homer’s Iliad as a teenager, and thoroughly

enjoyed it until I reached the ending. As the unread pages
dwindled, I was thrown into a state of confusion. Something
was wrong: Achilles was still alive, and the walls of Ilium still
standing. But what of the arrow to the heel, and the famous
wooden horse? The sack of the city? Surely there had been
some mistake. Half the book was missing! Was there a
volume two, which my eyes had somehow skimmed over in
the fluorescent glare of Bennetts Bookshop?
Had I bothered to read the introduction first, I would
have known that yes, once upon a time there had been a
part two, called the Aethiopis—although it was not authored
by Homer. It was also technically part three, as the Iliad
itself was part two, being preceded by the Cypria. There had
originally been eight parts to the story, known collectively
as the “Epic Cycle”,[1] of which Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
were volumes two and seven. Sadly, the other six poems
are no longer extant. Measured—perhaps unfairly—against
the genius of Homer, the epics of Stasinus, Lesches,
Arctinus and others were deemed inferior, and as such,
were permitted to fall through the cracks of history.
The Iliad and Odyssey have been tentatively dated to
the eighth century BC, with the non-Homeric epics
appearing a century or so later. It is tempting to view the
latter as having been composed in response to the former—
to “fill in the gaps” as it were—but the stories themselves
must have existed in oral form long before they were set
into epic. If we take the destruction layer dated 1190 BC at
the ruins of Hissarlik, Turkey as the date of the historical
Trojan War, then the legends it inspired may have been
germinating for 400 years. To describe the Homeric poems
as “older” is only to say that they were the first to receive a
fixed text.
Yet even the concept of eight fixed, canonical texts
recounting each phase of the Trojan War is problematic.
According to Jonathan S. Burgess, the Epic Cycle may in fact
be an artificial construct of the Hellenistic period—a label
applied retroactively to eight independent poems, which
happened to tell a coherent story when laid out in a
particular fashion.[2] In the archaic period (776 to 480 BC),
the heyday of Greek epic poetry, a plethora of works
concerning the Trojan War and its aftermath must have
circulated, some recounting the war as a whole, and others
focusing on specific episodes. Many of these would have
overlapped, or offered different interpretations of the same
events, reflecting regional traditions and the biases of the
individual poets. With the bulk of early poetry composed
and transmitted orally, it is easy to see how this pool would
have narrowed over time, with some epics being reworked
and even combined, and others disappearing altogether.[3]
Burgess, building on the work of the nineteenth-
century Scottish classicist David Binning Munro, argues that
Hellenistic scholars of the second or third century BC
combined eight such epics into a single, unified story,
editing and altering where necessary—perhaps lopping off
entire books where the narratives overlapped. Evidence of
this may be found when comparing the Chrestomathy
(“literary summary”) of the Epic Cycle by a certain Proclus[4]
with actual fragments of the lost epics preserved in other
literature. Proclus gives the impression that the Cyclic
poems fit together seamlessly, but fragments of the Little
Iliad and Iliou Persis in particular show a clear overlap, with
both epics apparently recounting the fall of the city. It may
be that the Epic Cycle described by Proclus was an edited
version, specifically created for performance at religious
festivals.[5]
 It is impossible to pinpoint when the six non-Homeric
epics were finally lost for good (and it seems unlikely that all
six disappeared at the same time), but the last references to
any of the works in the present tense date from about the
beginning of the third century AD. Quotes from the Cypria
and Nostoi appear in the writings of Clement of Alexandria
and Athenaeus of Naucratis (45 miles inland from
Alexandria), so these two poems—and possibly others—
were probably still extant in the Great Library of Alexandria
until it was burned by the Romans (for a second time!) in
272 AD. The composition of Quintus of Smyrna’s
Posthomerica, usually dated to around 350 AD, may indicate
a later survival of the Aethiopis, Little Iliad and Iliou Persis; it
is unclear whether Quintus was repackaging three neglected
epics for a new generation of readers, or attempting to
recreate something that had recently been lost.
Fortunately for us, the story of the Trojan War was not
confined to the Epic Cycle, and in 2017 I published a
reconstruction of the Cypria using excerpts from a variety of
classical poems, histories, plays, and mythological
compendiums.[6] In my naivety, I had conceived this as the
first of a series of such works, individually reconstructing the
six lost poems of the Epic Cycle. With the Cypria out of the
way I turned my attention to the other epics, but it soon
became clear that at least three of these would be
redundant, with the aforementioned Quintus of Smyrna
having already provided an acceptable reconstruction of the
Aethiopis, Little Iliad and Iliou Persis. The Nostoi, likewise, is
adequately summarised by Nestor and Menelaus in the third
and fourth books of the Odyssey; the three plays of
Aeschylus’ Oresteia may also be read as a bridge between
the Posthomerica and Odyssey.[7]
Which leaves us with the Telegony—an obscure, largely
forgotten post-script to the Odyssey, which sought to undo
Homer’s happy ending by having the hero abandon his
faithful Penelope for a Thesprotian warrior-queen, and later
die at the hands of a son he has never met in a case of
mistaken identity. I was initially reluctant to attempt the
Telegony; the paucity of source material made me wonder if
I could do it justice. In contrast with the Cypria, which
contained many individual stories popular with poets,
dramatists, artists and writers throughout antiquity, the
Telegony seems to have been virtually ignored. This is
perhaps unsurprising, as it was essentially an epilogue
centred around a single character, containing nothing so
important as the very genesis of the Trojan War. When
compiling my reconstruction of the Cypria I had a wealth of
material to borrow from—a process I described as “a kind of
literary back-breeding, carefully selecting passages for their
desirable traits, and combining them to emulate an extinct
progenitor.”[8] The same method applied to the Telegony
would have resulted in a work shorter than this introduction.
Clearly, a different approach was necessary. The
solution was a change in scope: to treat the sources
individually, and in their entirety; setting them side by side
and highlighting their inconsistencies rather than editing
them out. A broader focus, not only encompassing material
pertaining to the lost narrative as we understand it, but also
that which contradicts what we know, or disregards it
entirely.
The result is a wider examination of the many—often
competing—traditions of Odysseus’ post-Homeric
adventures, as opposed to a reconstruction of a lost work,
which in this case was not possible (nor desirable). This
does, unavoidably, come at the expense of narrative
cohesion, and requires plenty of editorial interpolations to
place the selected excerpts in context. Nevertheless, it is
hoped that the reader, upon coming to the end of this
volume, will have acquired as full an understanding as the
fragmentary material allows of the multifarious directions
Odysseus’ story took after his return to Ithaca—of which the
Telegony was but one.
 The Telegony is most commonly ascribed to
Eugammon of Cyrene, said to have been active around 560
BC;[9] this may make it the youngest of the eight, although it
is impossible to accurately date the six poems we do not
possess. From Proclus’ Chrestomathy we also know that the
Telegony was relatively short, consisting of just two books
(compare with the Odyssey’s twenty-four), which probably
separated the poem’s two distinct narrative threads.
Telegonus, the eponymous son of Odysseus and Circe,
may not have been introduced until the second book, with
the beginning of the Telegony apparently devoted to
Odysseus’ doings in the immediate aftermath of the
Odyssey—a journey to Elis and then Epirus, where he
married the Thesprotian queen Callidice and became
embroiled in a war against a neighbouring kingdom.
According to Clement of Alexandria, Eugammon stole “the
entire book on the Thesprotians” from the semi-legendary
religious poet Musaeus,[10] which suggests that this episode
originated in an earlier, unrelated work, with the
“Telegonus” story simply tacked on later. A “Thesprotis”
mentioned in the writings of second-century geographer
Pausanias seems a likely candidate for this hypothetical
forerunner.[11] Thus, Eugammon’s Telegony may have been
an attempt to combine multiple independent post-Odyssean
traditions into a single poem.
It is generally accepted that the Telegony was
composed after the Odyssey, and it has been suggested
that the character of Telegonus was a late invention, created
to bring Odysseus the “death from the sea” prophesised by
Tiresias at the entrance to the Underworld.[12] This would
explain why Homer makes no mention of Odysseus
fathering a child by Circe. However, it might also be argued
that the words of Tiresias are a deliberate hint of what was
to come—a wink to readers (or in this case listeners) in the
know. Telegonus’ conception was simply omitted so as not
to show the hero in an unflattering light.
A Note on the Sources

The Telegony is unique among the Cyclic epics in that

practically nothing of the poem survives beyond its rather
bare synopsis in Proclus’ Chrestomathy. There are no quotes
or fragments preserved in other works,[13] and although
numerous references to the Telegonus story may be found in
classical literature, none may be definitively traced back to
Eugammon’s text. Even Telegonus’ infamous spear tipped
with a stingray’s barb cannot be conclusively linked to the
Telegony, as it is not mentioned by Proclus (although this
section of the Chrestomathy is known to have been
abridged).
Later retellings of the story are also thin on the ground.
Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca only barely expands on the
Chrestomathy, and of the three great Attic tragedians only
Sophocles is known to have brought Telegonus to the stage,
but none of his plays on the subject are extant. To give the
reader some idea of how patchy the written record is,
almost half of the classical sources I have used are
incomplete—either summaries or epitomes of a longer work
which has not survived,[14] or fragments of or allusions to
lost works.[15] Many of the other excerpts boil down to
passing mentions in otherwise unrelated works, or retellings
of material already quoted. A description of these sources
follows.
Hesiod was a Greek poet thought to have been active
in the eighth century BC, roughly contemporary with Homer.
His Theogony is a detailed genealogy of the gods, from the
creation of the world and the birth of the Titans right down
to the offspring of gods and mortals in the Heroic Age. By
the classical period, the Theogony had come to be
recognised as the seminal text on the Greek pantheon—a
distinction it retains to this day.
 The Bibliotheca or “Library” by Apollodorus is an
anthology of Greek myths, believed to date from the first or
second century AD. Early scholars erroneously identified the
author with Apollodorus of Athens (d. after 120 BC); the
author of the Bibliotheca is sometimes known as Pseudo-
Apollodorus in order to distinguish him from the Athenian.
Frustratingly, the surviving manuscripts are incomplete,
breaking off before the story of the Trojan War. These later
sections are known only from two manuscript summaries,
combined into an epitome by the Scottish mythographer Sir
James George Fraser in the late nineteenth century. Even in
its reduced form the Bibliotheca contains a wealth of
invaluable material—not least due to Apollodorus helpfully
naming many of his sources, most of which are now lost.
Gaius Julius Hyginus (64 BC–17 AD) was a Latin author,
and a contemporary of Virgil and Ovid. The work for which
he is chiefly known does not even survive in his own words.
The Fabulae—a collection of fables similar in scope to
Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca—is preserved in a crudely written
summary, referred to by scholar and essayist Arthur L. Keith
as a “school-boy’s exercise”,[16] and it may well be exactly
that. Nevertheless, the Fabulae’s primitive reduction stands
alongside the Bibliotheca as a pillar of our modern
understanding of Graeco-Roman mythology.
Parthenius of Nicaea (d. 14 AD) was a Greek poet and
grammarian, and a tutor of the poet Virgil. His only surviving
work is the Erotica Pathemata—a collection of mythological
and semi-historical love stories. One such story is a retelling
of Euryalus, a lost play by Sophocles, which described one
of Odysseus’ adventures after his return from Ithaca.
Pausanias (c. 110–180 AD) was a Greek geographer
and author of the second century AD. His Description of
Greece is an early form of travelogue, detailing his journeys
around Greece, interspersed with lengthy diversions into the
myth and history of each location. Pausanias was
remarkably well read, and his writing contains frequent
references to literary works which have not survived—
including the lost poems of the Epic Cycle.
The Alexandra, attributed to the third-century BC
Alexandrian poet Lycophron, is framed as the prophecy of
Cassandra, daughter of Priam, predicting the course of the
Trojan War and its aftermath. It is written in a deliberately
cryptic, rambling style, with allusions to characters and
events hidden behind metaphors and epithets, designed to
test the reader on their knowledge of obscure myths. The
Alexandra would be largely unintelligible to modern
audiences if not for several centuries’ worth of scholia and
commentaries on the work, the chief of which was collated
and added to by the Byzantine writers John and Isaac
Tzetzes in the twelfth century.
The Archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonica (c. 1115–
1195 AD), like his contemporaries the Tzetzes brothers, had
access to a variety of ancient Greek texts which did not
survive the fall of the Byzantine Empire. His commentaries
on the Homeric poems contain a wealth of information
gleaned from these now-lost sources.
Another important scholiast is the early fifth-century
Roman grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus, whose
commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid contains several references
to the post-Homeric doings of Odysseus which are not found
elsewhere.
Plutarch (c. 46–120 AD) was a Greek writer and
scholar, who also spent time as a priest of Apollo at Delphi.
His Moralia is a collection of observational and philosophical
essays; one of these, titled Quaestiones Graecae (“Greek
Questions”), describes an alternate version of Odysseus’
fate which seems to disregard the Telegony. Another work
formerly attributed to Plutarch is the Parallela Minora—a
series of brief anecdotes comparing the lives of various
Greek heroes with a Roman counterpart, similar to his
better-known Parallel Lives. This is now believed to be the
work of a later author.
 Oppian was a second century poet from the Roman
province of Cilicia (modern Çukurova, southern Turkey). His
Halieutica, a treatise on fishing, contains a passage on the
deadly barb of the stingray, and how it caused the death of
Odysseus.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian who
lived in Rome during the reign of Augustus (63 BC–14 AD).
His Roman Antiquities is a lengthy history of Rome,
originally in twenty volumes, of which only half are still
extant. The work includes a number of the city’s founding
myths; of particular interest is an obscure legend which
attributes its construction to Rhomus—a son of Odysseus
and Circe.
Ptolemaeus Chennus was a Greek grammarian of the
second century AD, and author of a work called the Strange
History. The Bibliotheca of Photius of Constantinople (d. 893
AD) contains the summary of a New History by Ptolemaeus
Hephaestion, which is so outlandish and strange in some of
its claims that they are assumed to be one and the same.
Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris Belli Trojani is an
interesting document, purporting to be a first-hand “Diary of
the Trojan War” by one Dictys of Crete, a follower of King
Idomeneus. It was published in Latin in the fourth century
AD by a Lucius Septimius, with a foreword describing its
discovery in Dictys’ earthquake-damaged tomb at Cnossos
during the reign of the emperor Nero (54–68 AD). The text,
in Phoenician letters, was reportedly inscribed on a number
of wooden tablets preserved in a tin box; this was
subsequently translated into Greek and presented as a gift
to Nero. Three centuries later it came into the possession of
Septimius, who translated it into Latin.
The work, along with the rather fanciful account of its
rediscovery, was accepted as genuine by the Romans and
Byzantines, but later scholars assumed it to be the invention
of Septimius or an anonymous Latin author. Papyrus
fragments discovered among the ruins of the Egyptian city
of Tebtunis in the winter of 1899-1900 proved the existence
of a Greek original, which has been supposed to date from
the first or second century AD.
According to Septimius the Greek text was in ten
books, which he reduced to six by condensing and
combining the final five—that is, those describing the
misadventures of the returning Greeks. This means that the
passage corresponding to the Telegony would have
originally been longer, although even in its abridged form it
is still the most detailed account of Odysseus’ death to have
survived from antiquity.
Dictys’ version of the Telegonus myth is probably
based on a lost play by Sophocles titled Odysseus
Acanthoplex (literally “Odysseus wounded by a spine”), with
which it seems to have shared many similarities.
In this volume I have broken the rule I imposed upon
myself during my compilation of the Cypria of relying
exclusively on pre-medieval sources. With the classical
record so fragmented, I have devoted the third chapter to
an exploration of the medieval versions of the Telegony,
which are (sadly!) probably more satisfying to read than
anything that can be cobbled together from the scraps left
behind by the Greeks and Romans—even if they are some
way removed from the original narrative.
The medieval Telegonus story has its origins in the
Roman de Troie (“Romance of Troy”) by French poet Benoît
de Sainte-Maure, written in about 1155. Benoît’s version is
adapted from the account in Dictys, with the events uplifted
from the Bronze Age and reset in the Age of Chivalry. The
Roman de Troie served as a template for all subsequent
medieval retellings of the Troy myth, chief among them the
Latin Historia Destructionis Troiae by Guido delle Colonne,
completed in 1287.[17]
I have chosen two English renderings of Benoît’s story
—one taken more-or-less directly from the Roman de Troie,
and another via Guido delle Colonne—by Middle English
poets John Gower and John Lydgate, respectively. Both are
excerpts from longer works, and have been translated into
Modern English for readability. Those who have read my
ongoing Troy Myth in Medieval Britain series will already be
familiar with one of these.[18]
John Gower (d. 1408) was one of the major English
poets of the fourteenth century, and a close friend of
Geoffrey Chaucer. His 33,000-line Confessio Amantis (“The
Lover’s Confession”), completed in 1390, contains a wide
range of mythological and semi-historical stories, and draws
heavily on Benoît’s Roman de Troie.
John Lydgate’s Troy Book is a greatly embellished verse
translation of Guido delle Colonne’s prose Historia
Destructionis Troiae, undertaken at the request of Henry V
and completed in 1420. As well as a poet, Lydgate (d. 1451)
was a Benedictine monk at Bury St Edmunds Abbey. If his
verse sometimes lacks the elegance of Chaucer and Gower,
the so-called “monk of Bury” certainly made up for it in
volume, producing something in the region of 145,000 lines
of poetry in his lifetime.
The closing chapter gives a Victorian interpretation of
the Telegonus story, written by Australian “bush poet”
Thomas Henry Kendall in 1866. The Voyage of Telegonus is a
somewhat romantic take on the myth in 203 lines of blank
verse, and is based on a brief entry in the 1788 Bibliotheca
Classica by John Lemprière. Kendall was perhaps inspired by
Tennyson’s Ulysses, published two decades earlier.
As a final note, in order to create an artificial
consistency across this range of texts, I have—as with the
Cypria—silently reverted any Latin names to their Greek
forms. In this way Ulysses becomes Odysseus, Minerva
becomes Athena, and Jupiter and Jove become Zeus. An
exception has been made for names appearing in verse,
where, for example, Ulysses cannot be changed to
Odysseus without spoiling the metre and/or rhyme.
—D. M. Smith, 2020
 CHRONOLOGY

Mycenaean Age
c. 1190 BC | Proposed date of the Trojan War.

Archaic Period
c. 760-710 BC | The Iliad and Odyssey.

c. 730-700 BC | Hesiod’s Theogony.

c. 560 BC (?) | Eugammon’s Telegony.

Classical Period
480 BC | Battle of Thermopylae.

c. 460 BC | Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi.

431-404 BC | Peloponnesian War.

c. 414 BC | Sophocles’ Odysseus Acanthoplex.

Hellenistic Period
323 BC | Death of Alexander the Great.

c. 250 BC (?) | Lycophron’s Alexandra.

Roman Period
146 BC | Roman conquest of Greece.

c. 50 BC - 14 AD | Parthenius’ Erotica Pathemata.

c. 40 BC - 17 AD | Hyginus’ Fabulae.

27 BC | Augustus Caesar is named Princeps by the Roman Senate, marking the

beginning of the Roman Empire.

19 BC | Virgil’s Aeneid.

c. 7 BC | Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities.

 8 AD | Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

c. 100 AD | Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca.

c. 100 AD | Plutarch’s Moralia.

c. 100-140 AD (?) | Ptolemaeus Hephaestion’s New History.

c. 120-170 AD | Pausanias’ Description of Greece.

c. 180 AD | Oppian’s Halieutica.

c. 350 AD | Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris Belli Trojani is published in Latin. Greek

original believed to date from c.100 AD.

c. 350-390 AD | Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica.

c. 400 AD | Servius’ commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid.

476 AD | Fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Medieval Period
c. 1155 AD | Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie.

c. 1160 AD | John and Isaac Tzetzes’ commentary on Lycophron’s Alexandra.

c. 1180 AD | Eustathius of Thessalonica’s commentary on Homer.

1287 AD | Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Destructionis Troiae.

1390 AD | John Gower’s Confessio Amantis.

1420 AD | John Lydgate’s Troy Book.

1453 AD | Fall of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Victorian Period
1866 AD | Henry Kendall’s The Voyage of Telegonus
 I.

Thesprotis

After the Nostoi comes the Odyssey of Homer, and then the Telegony in two
books by Eugammon of Cyrene, which contain the following matters. The suitors
of Penelope are buried by their kinsmen, and Odysseus, after sacrificing to the
nymphs, sails to Elis to inspect his herds. He is entertained there by Polyxenus
and receives a mixing bowl as a gift; the story of Trophonius and Agamedes and
Augeas then follows.
—Proclus, Chrestomathy

Eugammon’s Telegony evidently picked up the story at roughly the point

where the Odyssey ends—there is a slight overlap, with the burial of the
suitors also mentioned in the Odyssey’s final book (XXIV.412-437). The actions
described above all concern the immediate aftermath of the hero’s return:
burying the dead, giving thanks to the nymphs in whose cave Odysseus
stowed his gifts from the Phaeacians (XIII.366-7), and then taking stock of his
cattle on the mainland—probably to see what remained of them after the
suitors’ continual feasting.
This minor episode of the journey to Elis is not mentioned by any other
writer, but we may glean a few details from Proclus’ summary. We know from
a comment by the swineherd Eumaeus in the Odyssey that his master kept
herds on the mainland (XIV.100-102), and there may have been some
agreement between the two kingdoms which permitted the Ithacans to graze
cattle in Elis, their own rocky island being unsuitable. The Polyxenus who
received Odysseus was surely the “godlike Polyxenus” of the Iliad, “son of
King Agasthenes, Augeas’ son” (II.624), who is known to have survived the
Trojan War. The two old comrades will no doubt have feasted and reminisced
about past adventures, with the host presenting a gift to his guest as per the
custom of xenia or “guest-friendship”.
The mixing bowl presented to Odysseus may have actually depicted the
story of Trophonius and Agamedes’ raid on the treasury of King Augeas, but
the tale could also have been told—perhaps by Polyxenus himself—as part of
the evening’s entertainment. His grandfather Augeas will be remembered as
the owner of the stables famously cleaned by Heracles as his fifth labour:

The Stables of King Augeas

The fifth labour laid on [Heracles] was to carry out the dung
of the cattle of Augeas in a single day. Now Augeas was king
of Elis; some say that he was a son of Helios, others that he
was a son of Poseidon, and others that he was a son of
Phorbas; and he had many herds of cattle. Heracles
accosted him, and without revealing the command of
Eurystheus, said that he would carry out the dung in one
day, if Augeas would give him the tithe of the cattle. Augeas
was incredulous, but promised.
Having taken Augeas’ son Phyleus to witness, Heracles
made a breach in the foundations of the cattle-yard, and
then, diverting the courses of the [rivers] Alpheus and
Peneus, which flowed near each other, he turned them into
the yard, having first made an outlet for the water through
another opening.
When Augeas learned that this had been accomplished
at the command of Eurystheus, he would not pay the
reward; nay more, he denied that he had promised to pay it,
and on that point he professed himself ready to submit to
arbitration. The arbitrators having taken their seats, Phyleus
was called by Heracles and bore witness against his father,
affirming that he had agreed to give him a reward.
In a rage Augeas, before the voting took place, ordered
both Phyleus and Heracles to pack out of Elis. So Phyleus
went to Dulichium and dwelt there,[19] and Heracles repaired
to Olenus. But Eurystheus would not admit this labour either
among the ten, alleging that it had been performed for hire.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, II.5.5

Trophonius and Agamedes

Trophonius is said to have been a son of Apollo, not of

Erginus [King of Minyan Orchomenus]. This I am inclined to
believe, as does everyone who has gone to Trophonius to
inquire of his oracle.[20] They say that [the brothers
Trophonius and Agamedes], when they grew up, proved
clever at building sanctuaries for the gods and palaces for
men.
 For they built the temple for Apollo at Delphi and the
treasury for [Augeas].[21] One of the stones in it they made
so that they could take it away from the outside. So they
kept on removing something from the store. [Augeas] was
dumbfounded when he saw keys and seals untampered
with, while the treasure kept on getting less.
So he set over the vessels, in which were his silver and
gold, snares or other contrivance, to arrest any who should
enter and lay hands on the treasure. Agamedes entered and
was kept fast in the trap, but Trophonius cut off his head,
lest when day came his brother should be tortured, and he
himself be informed of as being concerned in the crime.
The earth opened and swallowed up Trophonius at the
point in the grove at Lebadeia where is what is called the pit
of Agamedes, with a slab beside it. The kingdom of
Orchomenus was taken by Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, said to
be sons of Ares, while their mother was Astyoche, daughter
of Actor, son of Azeus, son of Clymenus. Under the
leadership of these the Minyans marched against Troy.[22]
—Pausanias, Description of Greece, 9.37.5-6

The Command of Tiresias

Odysseus next sails back to Ithaca and performs the sacrifices ordered by
Tiresias…
—Proclus, Chrestomathy

The “sacrifices ordered by Tiresias” are those described in Odyssey XI, when
Odysseus summons the dead seer from the Underworld:

“But when thou hast slain the wooers in thy halls, whether
by guile or openly with the sharp sword, then do thou go
forth, taking a shapely oar, until thou comest to men that
know naught of the sea and eat not of food mingled with
salt, aye, and they know naught of ships with purple cheeks,
or of shapely oars that are as wings unto ships.
 “And I will tell thee a sign right manifest, which will not
escape thee. When another wayfarer, on meeting thee, shall
say that thou hast a winnowing-fan on thy stout shoulder,
then do thou fix in the earth thy shapely oar and make
goodly offerings to lord Poseidon—a ram, and a bull, and a
boar that mates with sows—and depart for thy home and
offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold
broad heaven, to each one in due order.”
—Homer, Odyssey, XI.119-134

Here we see an apparent inconsistency between Proclus’ account of the

Telegony and Homer’s Odyssey. In the latter, Odysseus is instructed by
Tiresias to carry an oar on his shoulder until he finds “men that know naught
of the sea”, and upon meeting a man who mistakes the oar for a winnowing
fan (used to separate the chaff from grain), to plant it in the ground and there
make his offerings to Poseidon. But Proclus makes no mention of Odysseus
wandering about carrying an oar, and his phrasing seems to imply that the
sacrifice was made on Ithaca—where one would struggle to find a man who
did not recognise an oar!
A more logical version appears in Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca, in which the
sacrifice is said to have taken place in Epirus:

Odysseus in Epirus
After sacrificing to Hades, and Persephone, and Tiresias,
[Odysseus] journeyed on foot through Epirus, and came to
the Thesprotians, and having offered sacrifice according to
the directions of the soothsayer Tiresias, he propitiated
Poseidon.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.34

The phrase “according to the directions of the soothsayer Tiresias” certainly

seems to imply the carrying of the oar, but what is not clear is whether
Apollodorus has recorded a more accurate account of the Telegony than
Proclus, or simply a different version of the story altogether—one which was
more in alignment with Homer’s Odyssey.
Apollodorus’ failure to mention the journey to Elis would suggest that he
was not relying on Eugammon’s text, but an omission does not necessarily
denote an absence from the source material (and this applies equally to
 Proclus’ Chrestomathy). In any case, Proclus is explicit in the journey to
Thesprotia taking place after the sacrifice to Poseidon:

Callidice

He then goes to Thesprotia where he marries Callidice, queen of the

Thesprotians. A war then breaks out between the Thesprotians, led by Odysseus,
and the Brygi.[23] Ares routs the army of Odysseus and Athena engages with
Ares, until Apollo separates them.
After the death of Callidice Polypoetes, the son of Odysseus, [24] succeeds
to the kingdom, while Odysseus himself returns to Ithaca.
—Proclus, Chrestomathy

Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata (c. 200 AD), accuses Eugammon of

Cyrene of plagiarising “the entire book on the Thesprotians from Musaeus”—a
semi-legendary Attic poet who supposedly predated Homer. A reference to a
poem called the Thesprotis in Pausanias’ Description of Greece lends weight
to the possibility that the Telegony incorporated an earlier work, although
scholarly opinion is divided as to whether the Thesprotis was a separate
poem, or simply another name for the Telegony—perhaps referring to the first
book only, in the same way that the first four books of the Odyssey were
known as the Telemachy.
Apollodorus gives a similar account of Odysseus’ doings in Thesprotia,
omitting the intervention of Ares, Athena and Apollo in the war against the
Brygi, but adding the discovery of a second son by Penelope, Poliporthes,
upon his return to Ithaca:

Poliporthes

Callidice, who was then queen of the Thesprotians, urged

[Odysseus] to stay and offered him the kingdom; and she
had by him a son Polypoetes.
And having married Callidice, he reigned over the
Thesprotians, and defeated in battle the neighbouring
peoples who attacked him. But when Callidice died he
handed over the kingdom to his son and repaired to Ithaca,
and there he found Poliporthes, whom Penelope had borne
to him.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.34-35

Odysseus’ marriage to Callidice raises the obvious question: why should our
hero suddenly abandon the unswervingly loyal Penelope (and in the process
 retroactively spoil the “happy ending” of the Odyssey)?
The answer can perhaps be found in a number of non-Homeric sources,
which reject the Odyssey’s depiction of Penelope as the very archetype of
wifely fidelity, and recast her as an adulteress. The story of Penelope giving
birth to the god Pan was known to Pindar and Herodotus in the fifth century
BC,[25] and may be considerably older.
While there is no suggestion that any of these elements were actually
present in the Thesprotis/Telegony texts (both Pausanias and Apollodorus
present these tales of infidelity in contrast with the established narrative),
they may have arisen as a possible justification for Odysseus continuing his
adventures beyond Ithaca.

The Grave of Penelope

On the right of the road is a high mound of earth. It is said to

be the grave of Penelope, but the account of her in the
poem called Thesprotis is not in agreement with this saying.
For in it the poet says that when Odysseus returned
from Troy he had a son Ptoliporthes[26] by Penelope. But the
Mantinean story about Penelope says that Odysseus
convicted her of bringing paramours to his home, and being
cast out by him she went away at first to Lacedaemon,[27]
but afterwards she removed from Sparta to Mantineia,
where she died.
—Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.12.5-6

The Adultery of Penelope

But some say that Penelope was seduced by Antinous[28] and
sent away by Odysseus to her father Icarius, and that when
she came to Mantinea in Arcadia she bore Pan to Hermes.
However others say that she met her end at the hands
of Odysseus himself on account of Amphinomus,[29] for they
allege that she was seduced by him.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.38-39
Pan
Another fable [of Odysseus] is also told. For it is said that
when he at last returned to Ithaca he discovered Pan in his
home, who was born of Penelope and all of her suitors—as
the very name “Pan” seems to assert. Although others have
said that Pan is the child of Hermes, who lay with Penelope
in the shape of a he-goat.
But Odysseus, when he saw this deformed boy, is said
to have fled and returned to his roving. He died either of old
age, or at the hands of Telegonus his son, his life
extinguished by the sting of a sea creature. But it is also
said that just as he was proceeding to depart, he was
transformed into a horse by Athena.
—Servius, commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, II.44

The above statement from Servius refers to an obscure tradition that

Odysseus ended his days as a horse. This story seems to be relatively late and
not widely known, which would explain why Ovid makes no mention of it in his
Metamorphoses. Its earliest appearance is in the New History of Ptolemaeus
Hephaestion—a collection of strange and little-known myths dating from
around the beginning of the second century AD. It has been theorised that
some of the more outlandish stories are the invention of Ptolemaeus himself,
but that does not seem to be the case here, as the version recorded by
Servius is clearly independent from the one below.[30]

The Tower of Hals

In Tyrrhenia there is a place called the Tower of Hals (“Salt”),
and it is named after a Tyrrhenian witch called Hals who fled
the service of Circe.
When Odysseus came to her she allegedly transformed
him into a horse by feeding him a magical potion, and kept
him there until he died of old age. This may explain Homer’s
reference to “death from the sea”.[31]
—Ptolemaeus Hephaestion, New History, IV
 Parthenius of Nicaea records the following story from the lost Euryalus of
Sophocles, which describes Odysseus journeying to Epirus to consult an oracle
—probably that of Zeus at Dodona—and fathering a child to a woman named
Evippe. It is probably best to view this as an alternate take on Odysseus’
adventures in Epirus rather than attempting to fit it into the Thesprotis
narrative, with Evippe and her son Euryalus[32] replacing Callidice and
Polypoetes.
Interestingly, Homer’s Odyssey also contains a reference to a journey to
Dodona—albeit an imaginary one. Whilst posing as a beggar, Odysseus tells
Penelope that Pheidon, king of the Thesprotians, told him that Odysseus “had
gone to Dodona to hear the will of Zeus from the high-crested oak of the god”
(XIX.297-8). It has been suggested that this is a nod to a pre-Homeric tradition
of Odysseus visiting Dodona after returning from Troy, which Sophocles
resurrected for his Euryalus.[33] Odysseus Acanthoplex, another lost play by
Sophocles which may have been an informal or actual sequel to Euryalus, is
known to have included (or at least mentioned) a similar visit to the oracle.

Evippe

Even after his wanderings were over and he had slain

Penelope’s wooers, [Odysseus] went to Epirus to consult an
oracle, and there seduced Evippe, the daughter of
Tyrimmas, who had received him kindly and was
entertaining him with great cordiality; the fruit of this union
was Euryalus.
When he came to man’s estate, his mother sent him to
Ithaca, first giving him certain tokens, by which his father
would recognize him, sealed up in a tablet. Odysseus
happened to be from home, and Penelope, having learned
the whole story (she had previously been aware of his love
for Evippe), persuaded him, before he knew the facts of the
case, to kill Euryalus, on the pretence that he was engaged
in a plot against him.[34]
So Odysseus, as a punishment for his incontinence and
general lack of moderation, became the murderer of his own
son; and not very long after this met his end after being
wounded by his own offspring with a sea-fish’s prickle.
—Parthenius, Erotica Pathemata, III
 I will end this section with two alternate versions of Odysseus’ fate which
seem to bypass the “Telegonus” story contained in the next chapter, and may
indeed predate it. These see Odysseus exiled from Ithaca by the decree of
Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, and decamping either to Aetolia or Italy.
We have already seen the Italian connection in the excerpt from
Ptolemaeus Hephaestion, with Odysseus dying in Tyrrhenia/Etruria. Several
more examples will appear in the next chapter of Odysseus’ sons by Circe
and/or Calypso settling or founding cities in Italy.

The Judgement of Neoptolemus

And there are some who say that Odysseus, being accused
by the kinsfolk of the slain [suitors], submitted the case to
the judgment of Neoptolemus, king of the islands off Epirus;
that Neoptolemus, thinking to get possession of Cephallenia
once Odysseus were put out of the way, condemned him to
exile; and that Odysseus went to Aetolia, to Thoas, son of
Andraemon,[35] married the daughter of Thoas, and leaving a
son Leontophonus, whom he had by her, died in old age.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.40

Odysseus in Italy

After the slaughter of the suitors, some near related to the

deceased made head against Odysseus. Neoptolemus,
being introduced by both parties as an arbitrator,
determined that Odysseus should remove and hasten out of
Cephallenia, Zacynthus, and Ithaca, because of the blood
that he had shed there; but that the friends and relations of
the suitors should pay a yearly mulct to Odysseus, for the
wrong done to his family.
Odysseus therefore passed over into Italy; the mulct he
devoted to his son, and commanded the Ithacans to pay it.
The mulct was meal, wine, honey-combs, oil, salt, and for
victims the better grown of the phagili. Aristotle saith
phagilus was a lamb.
 And Telemachus, setting Eumaeus and his people at
liberty, placed them among the citizens; and the family of
the Coliads is descended from Eumaeus, and that of the
Bucolians from Philoetius.[36]
—Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 14
 II.

Telegony
When he had taken an oath of [Circe] that he should suffer no harm, Odysseus
shared her bed, and a son, Telegonus, was born to him.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.16

The eponymous son of Odysseus and Circe may not have appeared until Book
II of Eugammon’s Telegony, which was likely devoted to his journey to Ithaca
and the accidental slaying of his father.
Telegonus’ conception is not mentioned in the Odyssey, but according to
non-Homeric sources he is one of several children fathered by Odysseus on
his journey home from Troy. I have dedicated the Appendix to a catalogue of
the many children of Odysseus and their primary sources, but I give some of
the relevant excerpts here.
As will be seen, a high proportion of Odysseus’ sons are associated with
the founding of various cities and kingdoms in pre-Roman Italy, making him a
progenitor of the Italic peoples in a manner similar to the Trojan Aeneas. Most
of these stories seem to have Greek origins, but later generations of Romans
and (in particular) Romanised Greeks were apparently keen to promote the
legendary hero’s tenuous connections to the Apennine Peninsula—this despite
Odysseus’ sometimes poor reputation in Roman literature.

The Sons of Odysseus

And Circe the daughter of Helios, Hyperion’s son, loved

steadfast Odysseus and bore Agrius and Latinus[37] who was
faultless and strong: also she brought forth Telegonus by the
will of golden Aphrodite.[38] And they ruled over the famous
Tyrrhenians, very far off in a recess of the holy islands.
And the bright goddess Calypso was joined to
Odysseus in sweet love, and bore him Nausithous and
Nausinous.
—Hesiod, Theogony, 1011-17
 Hesiod’s Nausinous may be tentatively identified with Auson, the mythical
progenitor of the Ausones or Aurunci tribe. The name “Ausonia” was originally
used by the Greeks to denote all of Italy.

Auson
Ausonia was named for Auson, the son of Odysseus and
Calypso; this was a former region which afterwards gave its
name to the whole of Italy.
—Servius, commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, III.171

There seems to be a good deal of confusion surrounding the sons of Circe and
Calypso, with ancient writers disagreeing as to who was the mother of whom.
Auson was named as the son of Circe by Tzetzes,[39] and Latinus and
Nausithous also vacillate between the two depending on the author:

Latinus

[Odysseus] was carried across to the island of Ogygia. There

Calypso, daughter of Atlas, received him, and bedding with
him bore a son Latinus. He stayed with her five years, and
then made a raft and sailed away.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.23-24

Nausithous
Circe herself lay with [Odysseus], and of this union begot
two sons, Nausithous and Telegonus.
—Hyginus, Fabulae, CXXV

Even Telegonus himself is not exempt from this. Eustathius of Thessalonica,

writing in the twelfth century, names Calypso as Telegonus’ mother in
Eugammon’s Telegony.
This comment is puzzling, as Telegonus is clearly the son of Circe in
Proclus’ Chrestomathy—and indeed every other literary account of his
parentage. Although generally dismissed as a slip of the pen, it is regarded as
authoritative by some scholars.[40]
Telegonus
The author of the Telegony, a Cyrenaean, relates that
Odysseus had by Calypso a son Telegonus or Teledamus,[41]
and by Penelope Telemachus and Acusilaus.[42]
—Eustathius, Commentary on Homer, 1796.35

Like Hesiod, Dionysius of Halicarnassus records three sons of Odysseus and

Circe. Although the names do not align, it is interesting that both accounts
describe three brothers becoming rulers in Italy (Hesiod’s Tyrrhenians may be
identified with the pre-Roman Etruscans).

Rhomus, Anteias, and Ardeas

Xenogoras, the historian, writes that Odysseus and Circe had
three sons, Rhomus,[43] Anteias, and Ardeas, who, building
three cities, [Rome, Antium, and Ardea,] called them after
their own names.
—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I.72

Another tradition has Telegonus founding the ancient city of Praeneste, near
Rome (modern Palestrina). The excerpt given below does not make it clear
whether this is supposed to have taken place before or after his arrival in
Ithaca, but for the purpose of this chapter I have interpreted it as an
adventure along the way.
A similar myth concerns Tusculum, which Ovid refers to as “the city
whose lofty walls were built by the hand of Telegonus”.[44] In the latter case
he is presumed to have settled there after slaying his father,[45] but unlike
Palestrina, no actual account of the city’s founding has survived. The Mamilian
family of Tusculum traced their descent from Mamilia, the daughter of
Telegonus; the name of her mother is not recorded.

Telegonus in Italy

When Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, was sent to

search for his father, he was instructed to found a city
where he should see farmers garlanded and dancing. When
he had come to a certain place in Italy, and had observed
rustics garlanded with twigs of oak (prininoi) and diverting
themselves with dancing, he founded a city, and from the
coincidence named it Prinistum, which the Romans, by a
slight change, call Praeneste.
So Aristocles relates in the third book of his Italian
History.[46]
—Pseudo-Plutarch, Parallela Minora, XLI

The Ravaging of Ithaca

In the meantime Telegonus, while travelling in search of his father, lands on

Ithaca and ravages the island. Odysseus comes out to defend his country, but is
killed by his son unwittingly.
—Proclus, Chrestomathy

Proclus does not supply a reason for Telegonus ravaging Ithaca, but according
to Hyginus he was “driven by famine” after being caught in a storm. Hyginus
is also unique in having Telemachus present when Odysseus encounters
Telegonus:

The Tempest

Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, was sent by his

mother to search for his father. A tempest carried him to
Ithaca, and he was driven by famine to despoil the fields;
Odysseus and Telemachus, ignorant of who he was, took up
arms against him.
—Hyginus, Fabulae, CXXVII

None of the surviving sources definitively answer the question of whether

Telegonus realised where he was when he began attacking Odysseus’ herds,
but it must be assumed that he did not. With no record of the conversation
between Circe and her son, we cannot say how much Telegonus knew when
he set out “in search of his father”. From Proclus’ account alone it is not clear
whether Telegonus was even aware that his father was Odysseus, King of
Ithaca; Apollodorus records that he was, but this was not necessarily true for
Eugammon’s poem:

The Wounding of Odysseus

When Telegonus learned from Circe that he was a son of
Odysseus, he sailed in search of him. And having come to
the island of Ithaca, he drove away some of the cattle,[47]
and when Odysseus defended them, Telegonus wounded
him with the spear he had in his hands, which was barbed
with the spine of a stingray, and Odysseus died of the
wound.
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.36

As I noted in the introduction, Telegonus’ spear is not actually mentioned by

Proclus, and is only known from other sources; as such, it cannot be positively
linked to the Telegony. While it is possible that this unique weapon was a later
addition (similar to Achilles’ vulnerable heel, which was unknown to Homer),
the title of Sophocles’ lost Odysseus Acanthoplex (“Odysseus Wounded by a
Spine”) suggests that it is at least as old as the fifth century BC, and may be
reasonably assumed to have been known to Eugammon.[48]

The Spear of Telegonus

It is said that whilst visiting Circe, Hephaestus fashioned for

Telegonus a spear from a stingray, which was killed by [the
sea god] Phorcys when it was devouring the fish in his lake.
Its head was made from adamant, and the shaft of gold;
with this weapon he slew Odysseus.
—Scholia on Homer’s Odyssey, XI.134

The Stingray

While the stingray lives, a terrible and fiery weapon attends

it, such, I ween, as a man trembles to hear of, and it lives
when the stingray itself has perished and preserves its
unwearied strength unchanged; and not only on the living
creatures which it strikes does it belch mysterious bane, but
it hurts even tree and rock and wherever it comes nigh.
 For if one take a lusty tree that flourishes in its season,
with goodly foliage and fruitful crop, and wound it in the
roots below with that relentless stroke, then, smitten by an
evil bane, it ceases to put forth leaves and first droops as if
by disease and its beauty fades away; and at no distant
date thou shalt behold the tree withered and worthless and
its greenery gone.
That sting it was which his mother Circe, skilled in
many drugs, gave of old to Telegonus for his long-hilted
spear, that he might array for his foes death from the sea.
And he beached his ship on the island that pastured goats;
and he knew not that he was harrying the flocks of his own
father, and on his aged sire who came to the rescue—even
on him whom he was seeking—he brought an evil fate.
There the cunning Odysseus, who had passed through
countless woes of the sea in his laborious adventures, the
grievous stingray slew with one blow.
—Oppian, Halieutica

“Death from the sea” of course recalls the words of Tiresias in Odyssey XI:

The Prophecy of Tiresias

“And death shall come to thee thyself from the sea, a death
so gentle, that shall lay thee low when thou art overcome
with sleek old age, and thy people shall dwell in prosperity
around thee. In this have I told thee sooth.”
—Homer, Odyssey, XI.134-137

Homer’s foreshadowing of Odysseus’ death has been the subject of debate

since antiquity. The climax of the Telegony appears to be consistent with the
prophecy—interpreted as either the sea-faring Telegonus himself, or the barb
of the stingray on the point of his spear. However, the Greek may also be
translated as “away from” rather than “coming from”; thus, Odysseus will die
somewhere inland.
Tiresias’ “gentle death” also seems entirely at odds with the wound
inflicted by Telegonus, unless it is interpreted as a slow poisoning.[49] In the
 lost Psychagogoi (“Soul Raisers”) of Aeschylus, Tiresias’ prophecy was much
more explicit, although this version does not acknowledge Telegonus:

Odysseus and the Heron

“For a heron, flying high above you, will strike you with its
dung when it slackens its belly, and the spine of this sea
creature will rot your aged, balding scalp.”
—Aeschylus, Psychagogoi

The Return to Aeaea

Telegonus, on learning his mistake, transports his father’s body with Penelope
and Telemachus to his mother’s island, where Circe makes them immortal, and
Telegonus marries Penelope, and Telemachus Circe.
—Proclus, Chrestomathy

Telemachus’ marriage to Circe contradicts the claims by Dictys Cretensis that

he wedded Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous,[50] or according to Eustathius,
Polycaste, daughter of Nestor.[51] It is notable that only the marriage of
Telegonus to Penelope is mentioned by Apollodorus, which may suggest that
he favoured Nausicaa or Polycaste as Telemachus’ spouse:

The Islands of the Blessed

When Telegonus recognized [Odysseus], he bitterly

lamented, and conveyed the corpse and Penelope to Circe,
and there he married Penelope. And Circe sent them both
away to the Islands of the Blessed.[52]
—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.7.37

Hyginus adds that it was Athena who ordered the return of Odysseus’ body to
Aeaea, and also orchestrated the weddings of Telegonus and Telemachus to
Penelope and Circe. We also see another variant on the association of
Odysseus’ descendants with Italy, this time in Latinus and Italus, the sons of
Telemachus and Telegonus, respectively:[53]

Latinus and Italus

Odysseus was slain by Telegonus his son; he had been
forewarned to beware death from a son.[54] But upon
learning his true identity Telegonus returned to his native
land—the island of Aeaea—by the order of Athena, taking
with him Telemachus and Penelope. There they delivered
the body of Odysseus to Circe for burial.
Again advised by Athena, Telegonus took Penelope and
Telemachus Circe unto wife. Circe and Telemachus had a son
Latinus, for whom the Latin language is named; Penelope
and Telegonus’ son was Italus, who gave his name to the
land of Italy.
—Hyginus, Fabulae, CXXVII

According to John and Isaac Tzetzes, commenting on a passage in Lycophron’s

Alexandra, Odysseus was restored to life by Circe; Telemachus was then
married to his half-sister Cassiphone, the daughter of Odysseus and Circe:

Cassiphone

Also it is said that Odysseus was carried by Telegonus to

Circe, and that using her potions she raised him from the
dead, and married [her daughter] Cassiphone to
Telemachus. And in the Blessed Isles Penelope was also
married to Telegonus.
—Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron

The full passage in the Alexandra refers to an obscure legend that Telemachus
slew Circe in a quarrel, and was himself killed by Cassiphone in revenge for
the death of her mother. Odysseus, bewailing their fate, then died for a
second time, and his ashes were taken to Cortona in Tuscany. The original
source for this myth is not known, and it does not appear elsewhere. Note that
Lycophron does not acknowledge the marriage of Telemachus and
Cassiphone.

The Prophecy of Cassandra

“When [Odysseus] is dead, Perge, hill of the Tyrrhenians,

shall receive his ashes in the land of Cortona; when, as he
breathes out his life, he shall bewail the fate of his son and
his wife, whom her husband shall slay and himself next pass
to Hades, his throat cut by the hands of his sister, the own
cousin of Glaucus and Absyrtus.[55]
“And having seen such a heap of woes he shall go
down a second time to unturning Hades, having never
beheld a day of calm in all his life. Oh wretched one! How
much better had it been for thee to remain in thy homeland
driving oxen, and to harness still the working stallion ass to
the yoke, frenzied with feigned pretence of madness,[56] than
to suffer the experience of such woes!”
—Lycophron, Alexandra

Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris Belli Trojani provides the most detailed account of
Odysseus’ death to have survived from antiquity; I have therefore chosen to
present it as a continuous narrative, rather than cut and distributed among
the other excerpts.
Dictys introduces one major change: Odysseus is forewarned by a dream
that he will be killed by his son, and immediately places Telemachus under
guard. This version may be partly based on Odysseus Acanthoplex—a lost
play by Sophocles, which is believed to have included a similar warning from
the oracle of Zeus at Dodona that was also mistakenly interpreted as referring
to Telemachus.[57]
Dictys’ account provided the template for all medieval versions of the
Telegonus story, which will be explored in the following chapter.

The Dream of Odysseus

At the same time Odysseus was troubled by frequent omens

and bad dreams, and sent unto every quarter for those who
were expert in the interpretation of dreams. To them he
described—among others—his frequent visions of a being
half human and half divine, beautiful of features, suddenly
arising out of the same place.
When he reached out, eagerly desiring to embrace it, it
responded in a human voice that it was wicked for those of
the same blood to have a union of this kind; for indeed one
of these should destroy the other. Then he greatly
wondered, and as he pondered the meaning of this a bolt
rose from the sea and came between them, thrown
according to the vision’s command, and they were
separated.
This was explained by those present, who all declared
the omen to be deadly, and warned him to guard against
treachery from his son. Thus Telemachus, under the
suspicion of his father, was banished to the country of
Cephallenia to be kept by his most trusted guards. In
addition, Odysseus withdrew into another remote and
hidden place, attempting to avoid the power of his dreams.
During the same time Telegonus, whom Circe bore to
Odysseus and reared on the island of Aeaea, when grown,
set out for Ithaca to inquire of his father. He came bearing a
spear in his hands, the tip of which was made from the bone
of a turtle dove,[58] which was the insignia of the island
where he was born.
Then, when he was informed of where Odysseus was
dwelling, he came to him. There the guards prevented him
from approaching his father, and when he forcibly persisted
from another direction, he was again repelled, and began to
cry that it was an indignity and a crime that a son should be
prohibited from embracing his parent.[59]
Supposing it was Telemachus coming to harm the king,
they resisted his approach with force, as none were aware of
a second son of Odysseus. Then the youth—seeing how
vehemently they repelled him—became enraged, and killed
or gravely wounded many of the guards.
When Odysseus learned of this he supposed the youth
was sent by Telemachus, and he took up a spear—which he
was accustomed to carry for protection—and aimed it at
Telegonus. However, this stroke the youth intercepted, and
to his father he hurled the spear which bore his ensign,
intending to gravely wound him.
When struck, Odysseus fell, and thanked his good
fortune that this should be so—that he should be killed by a
foreigner, thus freeing his dear Telemachus from committing
the crime of patricide. Then, yet breathing, he questioned
the youth as to who he was and from whence he had come,
who so dared to kill Odysseus, son of Laertes, famous at
home and at war.
Then Telegonus understood that this was his parent,
and he tore at his hair and wept miserably, especially
aggrieved that he had been the cause of his father’s death.
And now as Odysseus wished, he told him the name of his
mother, and the island on which he was born, and finally
showed him the emblem on his spear.
In this way, Odysseus realised that the interpreters of
his dreams had correctly predicted the end of his life,
wounded by him whom he least expected. Three days later
he died—an old man already advanced in years, but not yet
feeble in strength.
—Dictys Cretensis, Ephemeris Belli Trojani, VI
 III.

The Medieval Telegony

It is interesting to note that during the medieval period, with the Iliad and the
Odyssey inaccessible to much of Europe, the story of Telegonus had a far
greater prominence in the Troy mythology than it does today. In contrast with
modern scholarship’s narrow and piecemeal focus on the works of Homer and
Virgil (and the occasional Attic tragedy), which tell only a small portion of the
narrative, medieval writers tended to consider the Trojan War as a whole; their
poems and chronicles often encompassed the entire Greek Epic Cycle—albeit
much altered—from the Cypria to the Telegony. In this way, the story of
Telegonus retained its place as the final episode in the Troy saga, as opposed
to the mere footnote to the Odyssey that it has since become.
The fountainhead of medieval Troy literature was French poet Benoît de
Sainte-Maure (d. 1173), whose Roman de Troie (“Romance of Troy”) combined
the Latin accounts of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, overlaid with a
unique twelfth-century veneer. The vast majority of Western European Troy
literature produced between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries owes a
debt to Benoît, either directly, or via an intermediary work, such as Sicilian
judge and writer Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Destructionis Troiae—a prose
adaptation of the Roman de Troie completed in 1287.[60]
Benoît’s version of the Telegonus myth is essentially an embellishment of
Dictys Cretensis’ summary; little has changed, save for the description of
Telegonus’ spear, and the action taking place outside a fortress rather than in
a field. Benoît also continues beyond the death of Odysseus, with a
reconciliation between Telegonus and Telemachus, the death of Circe, and the
brothers later reigning as kings of Ithaca and Aeaea.
I now give two medieval versions of the Telegonus story: one derived
from Benoît, and the other from Guido’s Historia. The first excerpt comes from
Book VI of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis—a 33,000-line epic in octosyllabic
couplets, framed as the confessions of a frustrated lover to the goddess
Venus, and his education in matters of the heart by her chaplain. Completed
in 1390, the poem retells a wide variety of biblical, historical and mythological
tales, with the Trojan War prominent throughout.
Here the story of Telegonus serves as a warning against love that is
tainted or attained by sorcery. Despite Odysseus’ belief that he has turned the
tables on the enchantress Circe and made her subject to his own desire, their
union is nevertheless cursed, and produces a son who is doomed to commit
patricide. Gower bases his account on the Roman de Troie, also including
some material from Benoît’s retelling of the Odyssey.
Of Ulysses and Telegonus

Among them which at Troia were, Ulysses at sieging there

Was one by name in specìal, Of whom yet the
memorial Abides, for while there is a mouth, 1395
Forever shall his name be couth.[61]
He was a worthy knight and king And clerk knowing of
everything.
He was a great rhetorician, He was a great magicìan; 1400
Of Tullius[62] the rhetoric, Of Zoroaster the magic, Of
Ptolemy th’astronomy, Of Plato the philosophy, Of
Danìel the sleepy dreams, 1405
Of Neptune and the water streams, Of Solomon and the
proverbs, Of Macer all the strength of herbs, And the
physic of Hippocras,[63]
And like unto Pythagoras 1410
Of surgery he knew the cures.
But somewhat of his adventures, Which shall to my matter
accord, To thee, my son, I will record.
This king, of which thou hast heard sain,[64] 1415
From Troy as he went home again By ship, he found the
sea diverse, With many a windy storm adverse.
But he through wisdom that he shaped Full many a great
peril escaped, 1420
Of which I think to tell you one, How that despite the
needle and stone Wind driven he was suddenly Upon
the strands of Sicily,[65]
Where that he must abide a while. 1425
Two queens there were in that isle Calypso namèd and
Circes;[66]
And when they heard how Ulysses Is landed there upon
the rive,[67]
For him they senden as so blive[68] 1430
With him such as he would he name And to the court to
them he came.
These queens were as two goddesses Of art magic
sorceresses, That what lord came to that rivage,[69]
1435
They made him love in such a rage And upon them
besotted so, That they will have, ere that he go, All
that he hath of worldly good.
Ulysses well this understood: 1440
They knew much, he knew the more.
They shaped and cast against him sore And wrought
many a subtle wile, But yet they might him naught
beguile.
But of the men of his navy 1445
These two reshaped a great party, May none of them
withstand their hests;[70]
Some part they shapen into beasts, Some part they
shapen into fowls, To bears and tigers, apes and
owls, 1450
Or else by some other way.
There might them nothing disobey, Such craft they had
above kind.[71]
Both that art they could not find Of which Ulysses was
deceivèd, 1455
That he ne’er hath them all avoided, And brought them
into such a rout That upon him they both besot; And
through the science of his art He took of them so well
his part 1460
That he begat Circe with child.
He kept him sober and made them wild, He set himself so
far above That with their goods and with their love,
Who that thereof be lief or loath,[72] 1465
All quit unto his ship he goeth.
Circe swollen up both sides,[73]
He left, and waited on the tides, And straight throughout
the salty foam He took his course and came him
home, 1470
Whereas he found Penelope.
A better wife there may none be, And yet there be enough
of good.
But who her goodness understood From first that she the
wifehood took, 1475
How many lovers she forsook And how she bore her all
about, The while that her lord was out, He might
make a great avaunt Amongst all the remenant 1480
That she was one of all the best.
Well might he set his heart in rest, This king, when he her
found in heal.[74]
For as he could in wisdom deal, So could she in
womanhead. 1485
And when she saw without dread Her lord upon his own
ground, That he was come safe and sound, In all this
world ne’er might there be A gladder woman than
was she. 1490
The fame, the which may not be hid, Soon throughout the
land is kid,[75]
Their king is come home again: There may no man fully
sain,[76]
How that they were each one glad, 1495
So much joy of him they made.
The presents every day renewed, He was with gifts all be-
snowed; The people were of him so glad, That
though no other man them bade, 1500
Talliage upon themselves they set, And as it were of pure
debt They gave their goods unto the king: This was a
glad home welcoming.
Thus had Ulysses what he would, 1505
His wife was such as she be should, His people were to
him subject, He lacked him nothing of delight.
But Fortune is of such a sleight, That when a man is most
on height, 1510
She maketh him swiftest to fall: There knows no man what
shall befall, The happenings over man’s head Be
hangèd with a tender thread.
That provèd was on Ulysses, 1515
For when he was most in his peace, Fortune began to
make him war And set his wealth all out of herre.[77]
Upon a day as he was merry, As though there might him
nothing harry, 1520
When night was come, he went to bed, And both his eyes
with sleep were fed.
And while he slept, he met a vision: He thought he saw a
stature even, Which brighter than the sun hath
shone; 1525
A man it seemeth was it none, But yet it was (as in figure)
Most like unto mannish creature, But as of beauty
heaven like: It was most to an angel like. 1530
And thus between angel and man Beholding it this king
began, And such a lust took of the sight, That fain he
would, if that he might, The form of that figure
embrace; 1535
And went him forth toward the place, Where he saw that
image now, And taketh it in his arms two, And it
embraceth him again And to the king thus did it sain:
1540
“Ulysses, understand well this, The token of our
acquaintance is Hereafterward to much teen.[78]
The love that is us between, If that we now such joy do
make, 1545
That one of us the death shall take, When time cometh of
destiny— Otherwise it may not be.”
Ulysses now began to pray That this figure would him say
1550
What wight he is that tells him so.
This wight upon a spear now A pennant which was well
begun, Embroidered, showed to him anon: Three
fishes all of one colour 1555
In manner as it were a tower Upon the pennant there were
wrought.
Ulysses knew this token naught, And prayed the wight in
some party What thing that it might signify. 1560
“A sign it is,” the wight answered, “Of an empire,” and
forth he fared All suddenly, when he that said.
Ulysses out of sleep abraid,[79]
And that was right against the day, 1565
That longer sleep he never may.
Men say, a man hath knowledging Save of himself of
everything; His own chance no man e’er knoweth,
But as Fortune it on him throweth. 1570
Was never yet so wise a clerk, The which might know all
God’s work, Nor the secret which God hath set
Against a man may naught be let.[80]
Ulysses, though that he be wise, 1575
With all his wit in his advice, The more that he his dream
accounted The less he knew what it amounted.
For all his calculatìon, He saw no demonstratìon 1580
All plainly for to know an end.[81]
But ne’ertheless how so it wend, He dreaded him of his
own son.
That made him well the more astone,[82]
And shaped therefore anon withal, 1585
So that within a castle wall Telemachus his son he shut,
And upon him strong ward he set.
The truth further he never knew, ’Til that Fortune him
overthrew. 1590
But ne’ertheless for sureness, Where that he might wit
and guess A place strangest in his land, There let he
 make of lime and sand A stronghold there where he
would dwell; 1595
Was never man who yet heard tell Of such another as it
was.
And for to strength him in that case, Of all his land the
securest Of servants and the worthiest, 1600
To keepen him within that ward, He set his body for to
guard; And made him such an ordinance, For love
nor for acquaintance, That were it early, were it late,
1605
They should let in at the gate No manner man, what so
betid,[83]
But if so were himself it bid.
But all that might him naught avail, For whom Fortune will
assail, 1610
There may be no such resistance By which a man might
make defence; All that shall be must fall algate![84]
This Circe, which I spoke of late, On whom Ulysses hath
begotten 1615
A child, though he it hath forgotten; When time come, as
it was wone,[85]
She was delivered of a son, Which callèd was Telegonus.
This child, when he was born thus, 1620
About his mother to full age, That he can reason and
language, In good estate was drawing forth.
And when he was of so much worth To standen in a man’s
stead, 1625
Circe his mother hath him bade That he shall to his father
go, And told him altogether so What man he was
that him begat.
And when Telegonus of that 1630
Was ’ware and hath full knowledging How that his father
was a king, He prayed fair of his mother this: To go
where that his father is.
And she him granted that he shall, 1635
And made him ready forth withal.
It was that time such usance, That every man the
cognisance[86]
Of his country bore in his hand, When he went into
strange land; 1640
And thus was every man therefore Well known, where that
he was born.
For spying and mistrustings People did then of such
things, That every man may other know. 1645
So it befell that very throw Telegonus as in this case; Of
his country the ensign was Three fishes, which he
should bear Upon the pennon of a spear. 1650
And when that he was thus arrayed And hath his harness
all assayed, That he was ready everydel,[87]
His mother bade to him farewell, And said to him that he
should swithe[88] 1655
His father greet a thousand sithe.[89]
Telegonus his mother kissed And took his leave, and
where he wist His father was, the way he name,[90]
’Til he unto Ithaca came, 1660
Which of that land the chief city Was callèd, and there
askèd he Where was the king and how he fared.
And when that he the truth had heard, Where that the
king Ulysses was, 1665
Alone upon his horse great pace He rode him forth, and in
his hand He bore the ensign of his land With fishes
three, as I have told.
And thus he went unto that hold, 1670
Where that his own father dwelleth.
The cause why he hath come he telleth Unto the keepers
of the gate, And would have comen in thereat, But
shortly they to him said, “Nay.” 1675
And he as fair as e’er he may Besought and told them
often this: How that the king his father is.
But they with words both proud and great Began to
menace and to threat: 1680
Lest he go from that gate fast, They would him take and
set him fast.
From words unto strokes now thus They fell, and so
Telegonus Was sorely hurt and well-nigh dead; 1685
But with his sharpened spear’s head He made defence,
how so it fall, And won the gate upon them all, And
hath slain of the best men five; And they raised up
the cry so blive[91] 1690
Throughout the castle all about.
On every side now men came out, Whereof did the king’s
heart excite, And he with all the haste he might A
spear caught and out he goeth, 1695
As he that was nigh wode[92] for wroth.
He saw the gates all full of blood; Telegonus and where he
stood He saw also, but he ne’er knew What man it
was, and to him threw 1700
His spear, and started out aside.
But destiny, which shall betide, Befell that very time just
so: Telegonus knew nothing now, What man it was
that to him cast, 1705
And while his own spear last, With all the ensign
thereupon He cast unto the king anon, And smote
him with a deadly wound.
Ulysses fell anon to ground; 1710
Now every man, “The king! The king!”
Began to cry, and of this thing Telegonus, who saw the
case, On knees he fell and said, “Alas!
I have mine own father slain! 1715
Now would I die wondrous fain, Now slay me who that
ever will, For certain it is right good skill!”
He cried, he wept, he said therefore, “Alas, that ever was I
bore, 1720
That this unhappy destiny So woefully came in by me!”[93]
This king, which yet had life for now, His heart again to
him he drew, And to that voice an ear he laid 1725
And understood all that he said, And ’gan to speak, and
said in hie,[94]
“Bring me this man!” And when he spied Telegonus, his
thought he set Upon the vision which he met, 1730
And he asked that he might see His spear, on which the
fishes three He saw upon a pennon wrought.
Now wist he well it failed naught, And bade him that he
tell him should 1735
From whence he came and what he would.
Telegonus in sorrow and woe So as he might he told it now
Unto Ulysses all the case, How that Circe his mother
was, 1740
And so forth said him everydel,[95]
How that his mother greets him well, And in what wise she
hath him sent.
Now guessed Ulysses what it meant, And took him in his
arms soft, 1745
And all bleeding he kissed him oft, And said, “Son, the
while I live, This misfortune I thee forgive.”
After his other son in haste He sent, and he began in
haste 1750
And came unto his father tight.
But when he saw him in such plight, He would have run
upon that other Anon, and slain his own brother,
Ne’er had it been that Ulysses 1755
Between them made accord and peace, And to his heir
Telemachus He bade that he Telegonus With all his
power him should keep, Until he were of his wounds
deep 1760
All whole, and then he should him give Land upon which
he might live.
Telemachus, when he this heard, Unto his father he
answered And said he would do his will. 1765
So dwell they together still, These brethren, and the father
starved.[96]
Lo, whereof sorcery served!
Through sorcery his lust he won, Through sorcery his woe
began, 1770
Through sorcery his love he chose, Through sorcery his
life did lose; The child was got in sorcery, The which
did all this felony.
Thing which was against nature wrought, 1775
Unnaturally it was abought: The child his own father slew,
That was unnatural enow.[97]
Therefore take heed how that it is So for to win love
amiss, 1780
Which ended all his joy in woe.
For of this art I find also, That hath been done for love’s
sake, Whereof thou might example take, A chronical
imperial, 1785
Which e’er into memorial Among the men, how so it wend,
Shall dwell unto the world’s end![98]
—John Gower, Confessio Amantis, VI
 The second excerpt is taken from the Troy Book of John Lydgate—a verse
translation of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Destructionis Troiae in
decasyllabic couplets, composed between 1412 and 1420. The typically
verbose Lydgate manages to expand Guido’s prose narrative to double its
former length, unwittingly restoring the passage to something close to its
original dimensions in Benoît’s Roman de Troie.
Lydgate provides a faithful—if ornamented—translation, with only one
significant deviation from the Historia: the being in Odysseus’ dream
(originally representing Telegonus) becomes female, and an object of sexual
desire rather than unconscious paternal love. It will also be noted that in this
version Telegonus arrives in Ithaca unarmed, and slays his father with his own
spear. This change comes via Guido, with the infamous spear—its unique tip
already replaced with a fish ensign by Benoît—now only appearing in
Odysseus’ vision.

Of a wonderful dream that King Ulysses had, and the

last in his days, which was assigned by his clerks,
that one next of his blood should give him his death’s
wound

On my knees a-low now I must lout[99]

To that same god that maketh men to rout,
And causeth folk to have glad visìons,
Both at morrow and on lusty evens, 2940
When Morpheus, with his sleepy wand,
Which that he holdeth always in his hand,
Hath markèd them against the darker night,
To maken men both merry and light,
And somewhile for to have gladness, 2945
And suddenly to fall in heaviness,
Like as to them he giveth evidence
By sundry signs in his apparence.
Unto that lord now must I meekly pray, At this time
my style to convey 2950
Of Ulysses the dream to describe, The last of all he had in
his life, Declaring him by tokens notable And by signs
 very demonstrable, As he slept against the pale
moon, 2955
His fatal day that should follow soon.
For it fell thus: as he abed did lay, After midnight, before
the morrow grey, He thought he saw appear a
creature To his sight celestial of figure— 2960
No earthly thing, but verily divine Of port, of cheer
wondrous feminine, And, as it seemèd in his fantasy,
Like a thing sent out of Faerie; For the beauty of her
goodly face Recomforted, plainly, all the place, 2965
Most surmounting and most sovereign; And the clearness
of her eyen twain, All suddenly, ere men might
advert,[100]
Pierce would even unto the heart— 2970
Defence none might ever be devised.
And Ulysses, with her look surprised, Did her behold
always more and more, And in his sleep for to sighen
sore, Pressing aye with full busy pain 2975
Her to embrace within his arms a-twain; But aye the more
he pressèd her to see, Aye the more from him she
’gan to flee; And aye the more that he would her
pursue, She in return began him to eschew, 2980
So contrary to him was Fortune!
And when she saw that he was importune, She askèd him,
shortly, what he would; And he to her the plain truth
hath told: “Verily,” said he, “my life’s empress, 2985
Whether ye be woman or goddess I cannot deem nor
judgen half aright, I am so blind and darkened in my
sight; But I dare well affirm it in this place, My life,
my death stand wholly in your grace, 2990
More of mercy requiring than of right To rue on me, which
am your own knight, And of pity and compassìon
Goodly to see to my salvatìon: For my desire lest I
may fulfil, 2995
This same night to have of you my will, To my recure I can
no remedy, For lack of ruth but I must surely die.
Now have I all, betwixt hope and dread, Myself declarèd to
your womanhead!” 3000
And after that she kept her close a while, And full
sadly began on him to smile,
And, as it is put in rememberance,
Said unto him, with sober countenance:
“Truly,” said she, “thine affectìon 3005
Would fully turn unto confusìon
Of us both, it is so perilous,
So inly mortal and contagìous,
That utterly, there gaineth may no rede,[101]
But one of us must anon be dead— 3010
This is the ending of the hateful chance
That should follow after our pleasance.”
And as Ulysses ’gan to draw him near, Beholding aye on
her heavenly cheer, Whereas she stood upright on
the ground, 3015
He saw her hold a spear long and round, The head thereof
all of burnished steel, Forgèd new and ground
wondrously well; And thereupon in his visìon He saw
a banner blazèd up and down, 3020
The field thereof all of colour ind,[102]
Full of fishes beaten, as I find, And in some books like as it
is told, In the midst a large crown of gold.
And ere that she turnèd hath her face, 3025
Likely anon to depart out of the place, She spoke to him,
and said in words plain: “This full token of parting of
us twain For evermore, neither for sour nor sweet,
After this day never again to meet!” 3030
And disappearing, anon her leave she took.
And after that he suddenly awoke, And ’gan to muse in his
own fantasy What kind of thing this dream might
signify; But whether it meant either bad or good, 3035
The secrecy he never understood, For it surmounted,
soothly, his reason.
Therefore he sent throughout his regìon
For such as were subtle expositors
Of fate or sort, or crafty diviners, 3040
For all the clerks subject unto his crown,
T’assemble in one his vision to expound.
And when they knew by informatìon
The manner wholly of his visìon,
They did conclude, according into one, 3045
The time approachèd and should come anon
That one that was next of his kindred
With a spear should maken him to bleed—
Let see where he his fate might remove!
Since it is hard destiny to eschew, 3050
As say those folk in their opinìon,
That work and trust on constellatìon.
And Ulysses, musing on this tale,
Changed colour and began to waxen pale,
Wondrous dreadful and full of fantasies, 3055
’Gan in himself to seek for remedies
To void away things that must not be—
He stareth broad, but he may not see,
His inward look was with a cloud shent;[103]
But thinking he would have to be prudent, 3060
Ordered that Telemachus his son,
Be taken and shut up in a prison,
He supposing fully in his wit
From all mischief thereby him to quit—
He naught adverted nor took him no heed 3065
To the sharpness of the spear’s head,
Nor to the fishes on the banner beat,
Nor to the sea, where they swim and fleet,
Nor of the queen that callèd is Circes,
That signs brought of war and not of peace, 3070
 Nor of the crown, token of dignity
Of one that shall hold his royal see,
Amid the waves, both the fell and wode,[104]
Among the fishes in the larger flood;
And he shall make the divisìon, 3075
Before remembered in the visìon,
Against his will, of very ignorance,
And execute the fatal purveyance
Up of the dream with his spear of steel,
Which Ulysses considered ne’eradel,[105] 3080
Nor to no man had suspicìon
Save for that Telemachus his son,
Who was closed and shut up in a tower.
And Ulysses, with cost and great labour, From day to day
did his busìness 3085
For himself to maken a fortress, Built on a rock, of lime
and square stones, Deeply ditched about it for the
nonce, That no man may enter on no side, Where he
intended all his life t’abide 3090
With certain men chosen in specìal, Night and day to
watch upon the wall That no man should have no
entry, Unless it fell that he secretly, Were known of
old, and to counsel sworn. 3095
Now, as the tale rehearsèd hath before, The old fool, this
dotard Ulysses, A son had begotten of Circes— Fresh
and lusty, young and courageous; And he was callèd
Telegonus, 3100
Born in the sea among the flood’s rage, That was also, for
to reckon his age, Five and twenty years or
thereabout; But of his father aye he was in doubt
What man he was or who it might be, 3105
Being thereof in no surety.
’Til on a day he, desirous to know, To his mother fell on
knees a-low, Beseeching her, goodly (and not to
spare) Of his father the truth to declare; 3110
 What he was, and where he should dwell,
He besought her that she would him tell.
But, soothly, she for long and many days Of prudence
hath put him in delays, Until she saw that she might
have no rest, 3115
So importune he was in his request; And when she knew
there was no other bote,[106]
From point to point she told him crop and root Of Ulysses,
and where that he was king.
And he anon hath made no dallying, 3120
But took his leave—it may no better be— And said plainly
he would his father see; Whereof the queen became
in heart cold.
But when she saw she might not him withhold, She him
besought, with cheer debonair, 3125
That he would soon again to her repair.
And forth he sailed onward on his way, Without abode,
upon that very day, By many port and many far
country, Until he was brought there as he would be—
3130
To Ithaca, a land of great renown.
And he ’gan searching through the regìon After the place
and palace principal Whereas the king held his see
royal; And he so long about the country rode, 3135
’Til he was taught where the king abode, Where Ulysses
was shut up in mew,[107]
To which place in haste he did pursue, A great part
relievèd of his sorrow.
And on a Monday, early by the morrow, 3140
Unto the bridge the right way he took, And found a porter
scornful of his look; And lowly first he began him to
pray If that he would goodly him convey Unto the
court, and make no tarrying, 3145
For a message he had for the king.
But proudly he denied him the gate, And shortly said that
he came too late
To enter there in any manner wise,
And ungoodly ’gan him to despise, 3150
Froward of speech and malicìous.
But in all haste this Telegonus,
As he that was in heart not afeared,
The proud porter he took by the beard,
And with his fist burst his jowl bone, 3155
That he fell dead, as mute as a stone;
And others also that him now withstood
He proudly made to leap into the flood;
And when more came to make a resistance,
He took a sword, by manly viòlence, 3160
And furiously in his irous teen[108]
(The story saith) he slew of them fifteen,
Himself almost wounded to the death,
And did, for very soothly, fail breath.
And Ulysses, what for noise and sound, 3165
To the bridge now is descended down, Finding his men at
entrance of the gate Dead and slain by full mortal
hate; And he full irous took anon a dart, Of adventure
standing now apart, 3170
And cruelly it cast at Telegon.
But the stroke, as in conclusìon, Damageth not, for it did
glide aside; And he for haste no longer would abide,
Took up the dart, without more arrest, 3175
And smote the king low under the breast Through the ribs,
shortly for to say, That of the wound he must surely
die— Having then no opinìon That he was king, nor
suspicìon, 3180
Nor that he had his own father slew.
The which fast ’gan to his end to draw; His wound was so
deadly and so keen That he might himself no more
sustain,
 But pale and wan unto the ground did glide, 3185
His men about him upon every side,
That busy were to help him and relieve.
But his sore it did so ache and grieve
That he well felt that he must be dead;
But exclaiming, as he raised his head, 3190
Having as yet mind and good reason,
Began remembering his visìon,
And how that it was told him, out of dread,
That one that was next of his kindred,
Descended down from his very line, 3195
His vision shall perform unto the fine[109]
And accomplish with a dart of steel.
And for he could not conceive it well
What that he was, nor who it should be,
He bade anon unto his company, 3200
Without harm or any viòlence
Should fetch anon unto his presence
The young man which at the gate were stood,
That had on that day shed so much blood.
And when he was before Ulysses brought, 3205
Of him he hath inquired out and sought,
First of his kin and next of his country: “Indeed,” said
he, “I was born in the sea, Among fishes amid the
waves green,”
And said also his mother was a queen 3210
Callèd Circe, of whom the name is couth[110]
Both east and west, and right far by south, And told also
his father was a king, That him begot upon his
homecoming From Troia town, toward his country; 3215
“And as my mother Circe told to me Secretly, that he
Ulysses hight,[111]
Of whom desirous for to have a sight, I entered am this
mighty regìon, And have pursued unto this dungèon
3220
 Only in hope my father to have seen;
But I see well my labour is in vain.
And since, in sooth, lost is my travail,
And that it may on no side now avail,
It were folly longer here to dwell: 3225
Lo, here is all that I can you tell
Of my kindred; ask of me no more.”
With that Ulysses ’gan to sighen sore, For lack of blood, as
he that was full pale, And said anon, when he had
heard his tale: 3230
“Now well I know my woeful destiny Fulfillèd is—it may no
other be!— Now well I know that it is too late To
grudge or strive against my piteous fate; For my son,
as clerks whilom told, 3235
Hath made an end of my days old, Thereon expectant,
with pains grievous!”
And with that word, this Telegonus, When he saw—against
Nature’s law— That he, alas, had his father slew, 3240
Which in that land for long had borne his crown, Without
abode he fell anon a-swoon, His clothes rent, his
yellow hair to-torn: “Alas!” said he, “that ever I was
born!
For cursèd is my woeful destiny 3245
And my fortune, which I may not flee!
Cursèd my sort, cursèd my adventure!
And I, refused of every creàture, Cursèd too my
dispositìon, And cursèd is my constellatìon— 3250
Cursèd also and unfortunate The hour in which my father
me begot!
So would God, without longer rede, —To acquit him anon—
that I were dead, To lay my life for his death to
borrow!”[112] 3255
And when the king saw his greater sorrow, And knew
he was his son of Circe born,
By many sign rehearsèd here before,
 He unto him anon forgave his death,
As he might for want and lack of breath, 3260
So importable was his passìon.
And also Telemachus his son, Which had in prison many
days been shut, To his presence in all haste was got;
Which when he saw his father at such point, 3265
Upon the death standing in disjoint, And knew also, and
the truth had found By whom he had his final deadly
wound, A sword he took, and, mortally irous, He
would have run at this Telegonus, 3270
Of high despite avengèd for to be.
But Ulysses of fatherly pity Made his men to hold him and
restrain; And amidst of all his grievous pain, By his
prudence—and that was done anon— 3275
He made his sons for to be all one; And gave in charge
Telemachus his son, Of entireness and affectìon, And
of whole heart, feignèd neveradel, All his life to love
his brother well, 3280
To part with him treasure, gold, and goods, As to the next
born of all his blood.
And now, in sooth, it was no longer tarried, That Ulysses
royally was carried Of Ithaca to the chief city; 3285
And after that he livèd but days three, Without more, and
then gave up the ghost.
I cannot say, plainly, to what coast, After this life that his
soul is gone, But in a tomb of metal and of stone 3290
The body was enclosèd in and shut;
And after that there makèd was no let,[113]
That Telemachus, with great solemnity,
Crownèd was in his father’s see,
Sword and sceptre delivered to his hand 3295
Of Ithaca, a full worthy land,
Right abundant of treasure and of goods.
And Telegonus with him there abode
A year complete, well cherished in his sight,
 And of his brother took the order of knight; 3300
And when he would no longer there abide,
The king for him wisely did provide,
That he with gold, great treasure, and plenty
Repairèd is home unto his country;
And his mother, of age waxèd sad, 3305
Of his repair passingly was glad,
As she that saw by her sorcery
He had escapèd many jeopardy,
Many peril, and many great distress.
And after that, she fell into sickness, 3310
And her debt did yield unto Nature, Which escape may no
creàture In all this world that is here living.[114]
After whose death her son was made king Of Aeaea, the
marvellous country, 3315
As I have told, enclosèd with a sea, Among rocks, where
many vessels drown; And sixty years there he bore
his crown, This manly man, this Telegonus.
And his brother too, Telemachus, 3320
Reignèd also in his regìon Seventy winters, as made is
mention.
And after that, they made a royal end, And both these two
to Jupiter they wend, To reign there among the stars
bright. 33
But now the lantern and the clear light Is wasted out of
Phrygian Dares, That once of Troy writer and poet was…
[115]

—John Lydgate, Troy Book, V

 IV.

The Voyage of Telegonus

We shall end this study with a nineteenth-century perspective on the

Telegonus myth, written by Australian poet Henry Kendall in 1866. Kendall’s
source is an entry in the Bibliotheca Classica of John Lemprière (1788), itself
based on Hyginus. The Voyage of Telegonus is unique in making the god Ares
the chief architect of Odysseus’ demise, in revenge for some unspecified
affront on the plains of Troy.

Telegonus, a son of Ulysses and Circe, was born in the island

of Aeaea, where he was educated in the arts of hunting,
war, &c. When he had reached the years of his 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.
—John Lemprière, Bibliotheca Classica
The Voyage of Telegonus

Ill fares it with the man whose lips are set To bitter
themes and words that spite the gods; For, seeing
how the son of Saturn sways With eyes and ears for
all, this one shall halt As on hard, hurtful hills; his
days shall know 5
The plaintive front of sorrow; level looks With cries ill-
favoured shall be dealt to him; And this shall be that
he may think of peace As one might think of
alienated lips Of sweetness touched for once in kind,
warm dreams. 10
Yea, fathers of the high and holy face, This soul thus
sinning shall have cause to sob “Ah, ah!” for sleep,
and space enough to learn The wan, wild Hyrie’s
aggregated song[116]
That starts the dwellers in distorted heights, 15
With all the meaning of perpetual sighs Heard in the
mountain deserts of the world, And where the green-
haired waters glide between The thin, lank weeds
and mallows of the marsh.
But thou to whom these things are like to shapes 20
That come of darkness—thou whose life slips past
Regarding rather these with mute fast mouth— Hear
none the less how fleet Telegonus, The brass-clad
hunter, first took oar and smote Swift eastward-going
seas, with face direct 25
For narrowing channels and the twofold coasts Past
Colchis and the fierce Symplegades,[117]
And utmost islands, washed by streams unknown.

For in a time when Phasis[118] whitened wide And drove

with violent waters blown of wind 30
Against the bare, salt limits of the land, It came to pass
that, joined with Cytherea,[119]
The black-browed Ares, chafing for the wrong Ulysses did
him on the plains of Troy,[120]
Set heart against the king; and when the storms 35
Sang high in thunder and the Thracian rain, The god
bethought him of a pale-mouthed priest Of Thebae,
kin to ancient Chariclo,[121]
And of an omen which the prophet gave That touched on
death and grief to Ithaca; 40
Then, knowing how a heavy-handed fate Had laid itself on
Circe’s brass-clad son, He pricked the hunter with a
lust that turned All thoughts to travel and the seas
remote; But chiefly now he stirred Telegonus 45
To longings for his father’s exiled face, And dreams of rest
and honey-hearted love And quiet death with much
of funeral flame Far in the mountains of a favoured
land Beyond the wars and wailings of the waves. 50

So, the ridges where the coast abrupt Dips greyly

past
westward, Circe’s strong-armed son Swept down the
foam of sharp-divided straits And faced the stress of
opening seas. Sheer out The vessel drove; but three
long moons the gale 55
Moaned round; and swift, strong streams of fire revealed
The labouring rowers and the lightening surf, Pale
watchers deafened of sonorous storm, And dipping
decks and rents of ruined sails.
Yea, when the hollow ocean-driven ship 60
Wheeled sideways, like a chariot cloven through In hard
hot battle, and the night came up Against strange
headlands lying east and north, Behold a black, wild
wind with death to all Ran shoreward, charged with
flame and thunder-smoke, 65
Which blew the waters into wastes of white, And broke the
barque, as lightning breaks the pine; Whereat the
sea in fearful circles showed Unpitied faces turned
from Zeus and light— Wan swimmers wasted with
their agony, 70
And hopeless eyes and moaning mouths of men.
But one held by the fragments of the wreck, And Ares
knew him for Telegonus, Whom heavy-handed Fate
had chained to deeds Of dreadful note with sin
beyond a name. 80
So, seeing this, the black-browed lord of war, Arrayed
about by Jove’s authentic light, Shot down amongst
the shattered clouds and called With mighty strain,
betwixt the gaps of storm, “Oceanus! Oceanus!”[122]
Whereat The surf sprang white, as when a keel
divides The gleaming centre of a gathered wave;
And, ringed with flakes of splendid fire of foam, The
son of Terra rose halfway and blew The triple trumpet
of the water-gods, 85
At which great winds fell back and all the sea Grew dumb,
as on the land a war-feast breaks When deep sleep
falls upon the souls of men.
Then Ares of the night-like brow made known The brass-
clad hunter of the facile feet, 90
Hard clinging to the slippery logs of pine, And told the
omen to the hoary god That touched on death and
grief to Ithaca; Wherefore Oceanus, with help of
hand, Bore by the chin the warrior of the North, 95
A moaning mass, across the shallowing surge, And cast
him on the rocks of alien shores Against a wintry
morning shot with storm.

Hear also, thou, how mighty gods sustain The men set out
to work the ends of Fate 100
Which fill the world with tales of many tears And vex the
sad face of humanity: Six days and nights the brass-
clad chief abode Pent up in caverns by the
straitening seas And fed on ferns and limpets; but
the dawn, 105
Before the strong sun of the seventh, brought A fume of
fire and smells of savoury meat And much rejoicing,
as from neighbouring feasts; At which the hunter,
seized with sudden lust, Sprang up the crags, and,
like a dream of fear, 110
Leapt, shouting, at a huddled host of hinds Amongst the
fragments of their steaming food; And as the hoarse
wood-wind in autumn sweeps To every zone the
hissing latter leaves, So fleet Telegonus, by dint of
spear 115
And strain of thunderous voice, did scatter these East,
south, and north. ’Twas then the chief had rest, Hard
by the outer coast of Ithaca, Unknown to him who
ate the spoil and slept.
Nor stayed he hand thereafter; but when noon 120
Burned dead on misty hills of stunted fir, This man shook
slumber from his limbs and sped Against hoar
beaches and the kindled cliffs Of falling waters.
These he waded through, Beholding, past the forests
of the west, 125
A break of light and homes of many men, And shining
corn, and flowers, and fruits of flowers.
Yea, seeing these, the facile-footed chief Grasped by the
knot the huge Aeaean lance And fell upon the
farmers; wherefore they 130
Left hoe and plough, and crouched in heights remote,
Companioned with the grey-winged fogs; but he
Made waste their fields and throve upon their toil—
As throve the boar, the fierce four-footed curse
Which Artemis did raise in Calydon 135
To make stern mouths wax white with foreign fear, All in
the wild beginning of the world.[123]

So onewent down and told Laertes’ son Of what the brass-

clad stranger from the straits Had worked in Ithaca;
whereat the king 140
Rose, like a god, and called his mighty heir, Telemachus,
the wisest of the wise; And these two, having
counsel, strode without, And armed them with the
arms of warlike days— The helm, the javelin, and the
sun-like shield, 145
And glancing greaves and quivering stars of steel.
Yea, stern Ulysses, rusted not with rest, But dread as Ares,
gleaming on his car Gave out the reins; and
straightway all the lands Were struck by noise of
steed and shouts of men, 150
And furious dust, and splendid wheels of flame.
Meanwhile the hunter (starting from a sleep In which the
pieces of a broken dream Had shown him Circe with
most tearful face), Caught at his spear, and stood
like one at bay 155
When Summer brings about Arcadian horns And headlong
horses mixt with maddened hounds; Then huge
Ulysses, like a fire of fight, Sprang sideways on the
flying car, and drove Full at the brass-clad warrior of
the North 160
His massive spear; but fleet Telegonus Stooped from the
death, but heard the speedy lance Sing like a thin
wind through the steaming air; Yet he, dismayed not
by the dreadful foe —Unknown to him—dealt out his
strength, and aimed 165
A strenuous stroke at great Laertes’ son, Which missed
the shield, but bit through flesh and bone, And drank
the blood, and dragged the soul from thence.
So fell the king! And one cried, “Ithaca!
Ah, Ithaca!” and turned his face and wept. 170
Then came another—wise Telemachus— Who knelt beside
the man of many days And pored upon the face; but
lo, the life Was like bright water spilt in sands of
thirst, A wasted splendour swiftly drawn away. 175
Yet held he by the dead: he heeded not The moaning
warrior who had learnt his sin— Who waited now, like
one in lairs of pain, Apart with darkness, hungry for
his fate; For had not wise Telemachus the lore 180
Which makes the pale-mouthed seer content to sleep
Amidst the desolations of the world?
So therefore he, who knew Telegonus, The child of Circe
by Laertes’ son, Was set to be a scourge of Zeus,
smote not, 185
But rather sat with moody eyes, and mused, And watched
the dead. For who may brave the gods?

Yet, oh my fathers, when the people came, And brought

the holy oils and perfect fire, And built the pile, and
sang the tales of Troy 190
—Of desperate travels in the olden time, By shadowy
mountains and the roaring sea, Near windy sands
and past the Thracian snows— The man who crossed
them all to see his sire, And had a loyal heart to give
the king, 195
Instead of blows—this man did little more Than moan
outside the fume of funeral rites, All in a rushing
twilight full of rain, And clap his palms for sharper
pains than swords.
Yea, when the night broke out against the flame, 200
And lonely noises loitered in the fens, This man ne’er
stirred nor slept, but lay at wait, With fastened
mouth. For who may brave the gods?
—Henry Kendall, 1866
 APPENDIX

The Children of Odysseus

In the Odyssey, Telemachus is portrayed as an only child; beyond Homer we find

at least one full sibling and a veritable host of half-siblings to five different
mothers. Producing a definitive list of the many children of Odysseus is rendered
unachievable by the potential double ups, and confusion among sources as to
who is the mother of whom. However, if we identify the three sons of Circe given
by Dionysius of Halicarnassus with Hesiod’s three and assume that Eustathius’
Acusilaus is Apollodorus’ Poliporthes, we are left with eleven sons and one
daughter. The sons may be reduced to ten if we identify the shadowy Auson with
Nausinous.
On the following page is a list of all of the known children of Odysseus,
sorted according to their mothers and the primary source(s) from which they are
known. Those appearing as the sons of both Circe and Calypso are indicated
with an asterisk.
Penelope

Telemachus (Homer, et al.)

P(t)oliporthes (Apollodorus, Pausanias)
(Acusilaus)[124] (Eustathius)

Circe

Telegonus (Eugammon, et al.)

Agrius (Hesiod, Eustathius)
Latinus* (Hesiod, Latinus, Servius)
Nausithous* (Hyginus)
Auson* (Tzetzes)
Rhomus (Dionysius of Halicarnassus)
Anteius (Dionysius of Halicarnassus)
Ardeas (Dionysius of Halicarnassus)
Cassiphone[125] (Tzetzes)

Calypso

Nausithous* (Hesiod, Eustathius)

Nausinous (Hesiod, Eustathius)
Latinus* (Apollodorus)
Auson* (Servius)

Callidice

Polypoetes (Eugammon, Apollodorus)

Evippe
 Euryalus[126] (Sophocles, Parthenius, Eustathius)

Daughter of Thoas

Leontophonus (Apollodorus)
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aeschylus, “Psychagogoi Fragment 275 Radt,” translated by S. Burges Watson,

Living Poets, (Durham, 2014)
https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/Aeschylus,_Psychagogoi_(Soul_Raisers),_fragm
ent_275_Radt?oldid=2481
Allen, N. J., “Why Did Odysseus Become a Horse?”, Journal of the Anthropological
Society of Oxford vol. 26, no. 2 (1995) Apollodorus, Bibliotheca and Epitome,
translated by Sir James George Frazer (William Heinemann Ltd, 1921)
Burgess, Jonathan S., “The Death of Odysseus in the Odyssey and the
Telegony”, Philologia Antiqua vol. 7 (2015) Burgess, Jonathan S., The Tradition
of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003) Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, translated by the Rev. William Wilson
(T. & T. Clark, 1869) Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, translated by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (Ticknor and Fields, 1867) Davies, Malcolm, The Greek
Epic Cycle (Bristol Classical Press, 1989) Delle Colonne, Guido, Historia
Destructionis Troiae, edited by Nathaniel Edward Griffin (Medieval Academy
Books, 1936) Delle Colonne, Guido, Historia Destructionis Troiae, translated by
Mary Elizabeth Meek (Indiana University Press, 1974) De Sainte-Maure,
Benoît, Roman de Troie, edited by Léopold Constans (Société des Anciens
Textes Français, 1904) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities,
translated by Edward Spelman (London, 1758) Evelyn-White, H. G., Hesiod.
Homeric Hymns. Epic Cycle. Homerica (William Heinemann Ltd, 1914) Frazer,
James G. (tran.), Fastorum Libri Sex, The Fasti of Ovid, Volume 3: Commentary
on Books 3 and 4 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Frazer, R. M. (Jr.), The
Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian (Indiana
University Press, 1966) Goodwin, William W. (ed.), Plutarch’s Morals (Little,
Brown, and Company, 1874) Gower, John, Confessio Amantis, edited by
Reinhold Pauli (Bell and Daldy, 1857) Grant, Mary Amelia (tran.), The Myths of
Hyginus (University of Kansas Press, 1960) Griffin, Nathaniel Edward, Dares
and Dictys, An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Versions of the Story of
Troy (J. H. First Company, 1907) Griffin, Nathaniel Edward, “The Greek Dictys”,
The American Journal of Philology vol. 29, no. 3 (1900) Herodotus, The
Histories, translated by Aubrey De Selincourt (Penguin, 2003) Homer, The
Iliad, translated by A. T. Murray (William Heinemann Ltd, 1924) Homer, The
Odyssey, translated by A. T. Murray (William Heinemann Ltd, 1919) Homer,
The Odyssey, translated by H. B. Cotterill (George G. Harrap & Company,
1911) Kendall, Henry, Leaves from Australian Forests (George Robertson,
1869) Lefévre, Raoul and William Caxton, The Recuyell of the Historyes of
Troy, edited by H. Oskar Sommer (David Nutt, 1894) Lemprière, John,
Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary (Henry G. Bohn, 1853) Lydgate, John, Troy
Book, edited by Henry Bergen (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1906)
Mair, A. W., Oppian. Colluthus. Triphidorus (William Heinemann Ltd, 1928)
Mair, A. W & G. R., Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron. Aratus
(William Heinemann Ltd, 1921) Meister, Ferdinand (ed.), Dictys Cretensis
Ephemeridos Belli Troiani (B. G. Teubner, 1872) Pausanias, Description of
Greece, translated by W. H. S. Jones (William Heinemann Ltd, 1918)
Parthenius of Nicaea, Erotica Pathemata, translated by J. M. Edmonds and S.
Gaselee (William Heinemann Ltd, 1916) Plutarch, Parallel Lives, translated by
Bernadotte Perrin (William Heinemann, 1914) Quintus Smyrnaeus,
Posthomerica, translated by Alan James (Johns Hopkins University Press,
2004) Rose, Herbert Jennings (ed.), Hygini Fabulae (A.W. Sijthoff, 1934)
Roulez, Joseph Emmanuel Ghislain (ed.), Ptolemaei Hephaestionis Novarum
Historiarum ad Variam Eruditionem Pertinentium Excerpta e Photio Edidit
Lectionis Varietate Instruxit et Commentatio Illustravit (Mayer et
Somerhausen, 1834) Servius, Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii
carmina commentarii, edited by Georg Thilo (B. G. Teubner, 1881) Smith, D.
M. (tran.), John Lydgate’s Troy Book: A Middle English Iliad (Independent,
2018) Smith, D. M., The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer’s
Iliad (Independent, 2017) Smith, R. Scott & Stephen M. Trzaskoma,
Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek
Mythology (Hackett Pub. Co., 2007) Snell, Bruno, Pindarus 2: Fragmenta (B. G.
Teubner, 1957) Sophocles, Fragments, translated by R. C. Jebb (Cambridge
University Press, 1917) Tsagalis, Christos, “Verses Attributed to the Telegony”,
The Classical Quarterly vol. 64, no. 2, (2014) West, M. L., Greek Epic
Fragments (Harvard University Press, 2003) West, M. L. (tran.), Hesiod’s
Theogony (Oxford University Press, 1966) West, M. L. (tran.), Hesiod:
Theogony and Works and Days (Oxford University Press, 1988)
D. M. Smith is a serial procrastinator and occasional writer
and editor. He was born in Hamilton, New Zealand in 1983,
and studied Theatre at the University of Waikato. His
interests include Greek mythology, all things vintage and
antique, pre-20th century literature, the music of Jethro Tull,
tea, and toilet humour. His first novel, Munley Priory: A
Gothic Story was published in 2016.

He lives in Horotiu, New Zealand with one cat.

Works by D. M. Smith
Munley Priory: A Gothic Story
The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer’s Iliad
The Telegony: Rediscovering the Lost Epilogue to Homer’s Odyssey

The Troy Myth in Medieval Britain

I. John Lydgate’s Troy Book: A Middle English Iliad
II. The Seege of Troye & The Rawlinson Prose Siege of Troy
III. The Laud Troy Book: The Forgotten Troy Romance

[1]
I am excluding the Titanomachy and the three epics of the Theban Cycle,
which are sometimes placed before the Cypria. For the purposes of this volume I
refer only to the Trojan Cycle.
[2]
Jonathan S. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer & the Epic
Cycle (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)
[3]
This may explain why some of the Cyclic epics are attributed to multiple
authors; e.g., the Nostoi of Hagias may be distinct from the Nostoi of Eumelus.
[4]
Possibly the second-century grammarian Eutychius Proclus, tutor to Marcus
Aurelius.
[5]
Another possibility is that the surviving text of the Chrestomathy—itself a
redaction of a longer work, trimmed down to provide a preface to a medieval
manuscript of the Iliad—deliberately glosses over any inconsistencies so as not
to confuse the reader.
[6]
D. M. Smith, The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer’s Iliad
(Independent, 2017)
[7]
I may yet return to the Nostoi at some stage.
[8]
Smith 2017, p. iv
[9]
At least one ancient writer, Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 325 AD) attributed the
poem to Cinaethon of Sparta, but this seems to have been in error, as elsewhere
in his writings he acknowledged Eugammon as the author (West 2003, p. 251).
[10]
Stromata VI.2
[11]
Description of Greece, 8.12.5
[12]
Odyssey XI.134
[13]
Two possible fragments identified by A. Bernabé and E. Livrea have been
discredited by Christos Tsagalis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
(Tsagalis 2004, p. 456).
[14]
Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca, Hyginus’ Fabulae, Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris Belli
Trojani, Ptolemaeus Hephaestion’s New History.
[15]
Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi, Parthenius’ summary of Sophocles’ Euryalus,
Pseudo-Plutarch’s reference to Aristocles’ Italian History, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus’ reference to a lost history by Xenogoras.
[16]
A. L. Keith, The Classical Journal vol. 31, no. 1 (October 1935): p.53
[17]
Guido’s Historia Destructionis Troiae was originally believed to have inspired
Benoît’s Roman de Troie; it was not discovered until the nineteenth century that
the reverse is true.
[18]
D M Smith, John Lydgate’s Troy Book: A Middle English Iliad. The Troy Myth in
Medieval Britain vol. I (Independent, 2018)
[19]
Phyleus was the father of Meges, who led the Dulichium contingent to Troy in
“forty black ships” (Iliad II.625-630).
[20]
The Oracle of Trophonius in Boeotia was famous throughout the ancient
world. A person wishing to consult the oracle would descend feet first through a
narrow hole into an underground shrine, and return “paralyzed with terror and
unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings” (Pausanias, Description of
Greece, 9.39.13).
[21].
There are two versions of this tale. In one variant, the brothers build a
treasury for King Augeas of Elis; in the other, the treasury is for Hyrieus of
Boeotia. In the passage I have quoted, Pausanias relates the latter version; as
the story itself is otherwise the same, I have simply changed the name to
Augeas.
[22].
“And they that dwelt in Aspledon and Orchomenus of the Minyae were led
by Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares, whom, in the palace of Actor, …
Astyoche, the honoured maiden, conceived of mighty Ares, when she had
entered into her upper chamber; for he lay with her in secret. And with these
were ranged thirty hollow ships.” (Iliad, II.511-516)
[23]
Balkan tribes who migrated south during the Bronze Age, possibly related to
the Phrygians of Anatolia.
[24]
A number of Odysseus’ sons share a name with an old comrade from Troy,
which cannot be coincidental. In the Iliad, Polypoetes was the son of Pirithous
and Hippodamia, and co-commanded the Lapith contingent in forty ships
(II.740).
[25]
Pindar fr. 100 (Snell) and Herodotus, Histories, 2.145.
[26]
Poliporthes in Apollodorus. In Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris Belli Trojani,
Ptoliporthes is the son of Telemachus and Nausicaa.
[27]
Penelope was a Spartan; her father Icarius was the brother of Tyndareus.
[28]
Antinous son of Eupheithes is the loudest, and worst behaved of Penelope’s
suitors in the Odyssey. He instigated the plot to slay Telemachus upon his return
from Lacedaemon (XVI.358-392), and was the first suitor to be killed by
Odysseus (XXII.8-25).
[29]
Amphinomus son of Nisus is the mildest of the suitors, who “above all the
others … pleased Penelope with his words, for he had an understanding heart”
(Odyssey, XVI.397-8). He twice dissuaded the other suitors from murdering
Telemachus (XVI.394-405 & XX.244) and also defended Odysseus when he came
to the house dressed as a beggar (XVIII.413-421). This was not enough to earn
him a reprieve; he was speared through the back by Telemachus while
attempting to drive Odysseus away from the exit (XXII.89).
[30]
Allen 1995, p. 145
[31]
The witch’s name is “Hals/Salt”, which comes from the sea.
[32]
In the Iliad, Euryalus was a companion of Diomedes, and a co-leader of the
Argives (see note 24).
[33]
Burgess 2015, p. 112
[34]
According to Eustathius, the son of Odysseus and Evippe was also called
Doryclus or Leontophron (compare with Apollodorus’ Leontophonus, Odysseus’
son by the daughter of Thoas), and was slain by Telemachus in Sophocles’ play—
not Odysseus (Commentary on Homer, 1796.52).
[35]
Thoas led the Aetolian contingent to Troy, in forty ships (Iliad, II.638-644). In
the Odyssey, the son of Laertes, concealing his identity, tells the swineherd
Eumaeus a long-winded story of shivering in an ambush before the walls of Troy,
and how Odysseus, taking pity on him, tricked Thoas into giving up his purple
cloak (XIV.459-506).
[36]
Eumaeus and Philoetius were Odysseus’ swineherd and cowherd,
respectively. They remained loyal, and assisted Odysseus in the slaying of the
suitors (Odyssey XXII.265-292).
[37]
Technically the same character as the Latinus of the Aeneid, although Virgil’s
Latinus is a generation older, and the son of Faunus (VII.45-48).
[38]
M. L. West (1966) believed the line describing Telegonus to be a Byzantine
interpolation, and went so far as to omit it from his 1988 edition of Hesiod.
[39]
On Lycophron, 44.696
[40]
West 2003, p. 171
[41]
The name “Teledamus” does not appear elsewhere, except as a son of
Agamemnon and the Trojan princess Cassandra in Pausanias’ Description of
Greece 2.16.6.
[42]
Acusilaus is unique to Eustathius, and may be another name for
P(t)oliporthes. Some modern translations of Eustathius read “Arcesilaus”, which
would give us a third son sharing a name with a Greek leader at Troy—in this
case the co-commander of the Boeotians, slain by Hector during the attack on
the ships (Iliad XV.329). Arcesilaus II was also the King of Cyrene at the time
Eugammon (a Cyrenean) is said to have composed the Telegony (560–550 BC).
[43]
Plutarch also acknowledges “Romanus, son of Odysseus and Circe” in his
Parallel Lives, I.2.
[44]
Fasti, III.92
[45]
Fraser 1929, p. 29
[46]
The full passage compares Telegonus with Hegesistratus of Ephesus, who
received a similar instruction from the god Apollo which led him to found Elaeus
in Asia Minor.
[47]
Sources also disagree on exactly what Telegonus attacked, with Apollodorus
recording cattle and Oppian recording goats.
[48]
Parthenius also mentions the spear in his summary of Sophocles’ Euryalus,
but he may be referring to events outside the scope of the play.
[49].
Burgess 2015, p. 111.
[50]
Ephemeris Belli Trojani, VI.6
[51]
Eustathius on Homer, Odyssey III.464
[52]
Another name for the Elysian Fields.
[53]
Latinus was more commonly the son of Odysseus by either Circe or Calypso,
although they may be separate characters.
[54]
Dictys Cretensis elaborates on this tradition, as will be seen later in this
chapter.
[55]
Cassiphone was the first cousin of Absyrtus son of Aeëtes, and Glaucus son
of Pasiphaë, whose parents were the siblings of Circe.
[56]
Refers to Odysseus’ failed attempt to avoid going to Troy. He yoked an ass
and an ox to a plough, pretending to be mad (the animals would pull at different
speeds, making it impossible to plough in a straight line). The ruse was
uncovered by Palamedes when he laid the infant Telemachus in the path of the
plough.
[57]
Sophocles’ Euryalus included a similar visit to Dodona, where Odysseus
seduced Evippe.
[58]
The Latin marinae turturis may also be translated as “sea turtle”.
[59]
Note that Dictys omits the attack on Odysseus’ livestock.
[60]
A notable exception is Odysseus’ “cameo” in Dante Alighieri’s Divine
Comedy, completed in 1320. In canto 26 the poet encounters Odysseus in the
Eighth Circle of Hell, condemned alongside Diomedes for their deceits; there,
Odysseus describes his death by shipwreck after leaving Circe, apparently never
having reached Ithaca at all.
[61]
known
[62]
Cicero
[63]
Hippocrates
[64]
said
[65]
Benoît’s Roman de Troie has “Eoli” (Aeolus, as per Dictys). Gower gives the
location of Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemus, which occurs directly prior to
his meeting with Circe in the narrative.
[66]
Gower here takes some liberties with the source material, and places Circe
and Calypso on the same island.
[67]
shore
[68]
swift
[69]
shore
[70]
orders
[71]
beyond nature
[72]
willing or not
[73]
with child
[74]
health
[75]
known
[76]
say
[77]
balance
[78]
anguish
[79]
arose
[80]
halted
[81]
Gower omits Odysseus’ consultation of the dream interpreters and
soothsayers.
[82]
astonished
[83]
betided
[84]
in any case
[85]
usual
[86]
symbol
[87]
completely
[88]
soon
[89]
times
[90]
took
[91]
quickly
[92]
mad
[93]
Here Telegonus recognises that he has slain his own father from the cries of
Odysseus’ men. This detail is the invention of Gower.
[94]
in haste
[95]
everything
[96]
died
[97]
enough
[98]
Gower cuts Benoît’s story short, omitting the reconciliation and later history
of Telemachus and Telegonus. The full ending is given by Lydgate.
[99]
bow; stoop
[100]
recognise
[101]
counsel
[102]
indigo
[103]
spoilt
[104]
mad
[105]
not at all
[106]
benefit; good
[107]
a hiding place
[108]
anger
[109]
finish
[110]
known
[111]
was called
[112]
for sure
[113]
delay
[114]
In the medieval tradition, Circe is a mortal sorceress rather than a goddess;
therefore she is subject to death from old age.
[115]
Lydgate finishes his story of Telegonus on the first line of a couplet. I have
included the next few lines, in which he goes on to lament that he has no more
Latin from Phrygian Dares and the Cretan Dictys to translate, and the story is
thus at an end (Troy Book nevertheless continues for another 400-odd lines!).
[116]
Hyrie (or Hyria) is a lake in Aetolia, named for the mother of Cycnus by
Apollo (not the Cycnus, son of Poseidon slain by Achilles at Troy). When Cycnus
leaped from a precipice to slay himself, he was instead transformed into a swan;
his mother, unaware that he had been saved, dissolved in tears and became a
lake (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII.371-381).
[117]
The “Clashing Rocks” navigated by Jason and the Argonauts. Circe also
warned Odysseus to avoid them (Odyssey XII.55-72). Kendall places the
mythical Aeaea far to the east of Ithaca; it is generally said to have been located
off the west coast of Italy.
[118]
A river in Colchis, today known as the Rioni.
[119]
Aphrodite, from the island of Cythera with which she is associated.
[120]
There is no specific incident in Homer or elsewhere in which Odysseus
wrongs Ares at Troy, unless it is simply that he fought for the Greeks.
[121]
Refers to the Theban prophet Tiresias, whose mother was the nymph
Chariclo.
[122]
Son of Uranus and Gaia, personification of the ocean.
[123]
Refers to the Calydonian Boar, sent by the goddess Artemis to ravage the
kingdom of Oeneus, who failed to acknowledge her in his annual sacrifice.
Oeneus’ son Meleager led a coalition of heroes (including many of the fathers of
the Greek leaders at Troy) to hunt the boar, which he slew with the aid of the
huntress Atalanta.
[124]
Likely another name for P(t)oliporthes.
[125]
Odysseus’ only known daughter.
[126]
Eustathius also records the names Doryclus and Leontophron for the son of
Odysseus and Evippe.