Telegonus
3. A son of Odysseus by Circe. At the time when Odysseus had returned to Ithaca, Circe sent out Telegonus in search of his father. A storm cast his ship on the coast of Ithaca, and being pressed by hunger, he began to plunder the fields. Odyssens and Telemachus, on being informed of the ravages caused by the stranger, went out to fight against him; but Telegonus ran Odyssens through with a spear which he had received from his mother. (Comp. Horat. 3.29. 8; Ov. Tr. 1.1, 114.) At the command of Athena, Telegonus accompanied by Telemachus and Penelope, went to Circe in Aeaea, there buried the body of Odysseus, and married Penelope, by whom he became the father of Italus. (Hes. Theog. 1014; Hygin. Fab. 127; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 805; Eustath. ad Hom. pp. 1660, 1676; Serv. ad Aen. 2.44; Lucian, De Salt. 46; Aristot. Poet. 14.) In Italy Telegonus was believed to have been the founder of the towns of Tusculum and Praeneste. (Ov. Fast. 3.92, 4.71; Horat. l.c.; Dionys. A. R. 4.45; Plut. Parall. Min. 41.) In some traditions Telegonus (also called Teledamus) is described as a son of Odysseus by Calypso. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1796.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.