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[69]

Between Elaea, Pitane, Atarneus, and Pergamum lies Teuthrania, which is at no greater distance than seventy stadia from any of them and is this side the Caïcus River; and the story told is that Teuthras was king of the Cilicians and Mysians. Euripides1 says that Auge, with her child Telephus, was put by Aleus, her father, into a chest and submerged in the sea when he had detected her ruin by Heracles, but that by the providence of Athena the chest was carried across the sea and cast ashore at the mouth of the Caïcus, and that Teuthras rescued the prisoners, and treated the mother as his wife and the child as his own son.2 Now this is the myth, but there must have been some other issue of fortune through which the daughter of the Arcadian consorted with the king of the Mysians and her son succeeded to his kingdom. It is believed, at any rate, that both Teuthras and Telephus reigned as kings over the country round Teuthrania and the Caïcus, though Homer goes only so far as to mention the story thus:“But what a man was the son of Telephus, the hero Eurypylus, whom he slew with the bronze; and round him were slain many comrades, Ceteians, on account of a woman's gifts.
3The poet thus sets before us a puzzle instead of making a clear statement; for we neither know whom we should understand the poet to mean by the "Ceteians" nor what he means by "on account of the gifts of a woman";4 but the grammarians too throw in petty myths, more to show their inventiveness than to solve questions.

1 Eur. Fr. 696 (Nauck)

2 Cf. 12. 8. 2, 4.

3 Hom. Od. 11.521

4 On the variant myths of Auge and Telephus see Estathius Hom. Od. 11.521; also Leaf's note and references (p. 340).

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