The Myth of Telegonus | The Telegony, Son of Odysseus and Circe, and the Tradition of His Death

Telegonus is a figure said to be the son born between Odysseus and Circe. However, this story belongs not to the Odyssey but to the tradition of the Telegony, a follow-up epic that deals with the events that came after.

And the ending that tradition passes down is a heavy one. It tells that Telegonus, without recognizing that it was his father, brought Odysseus to his death.

So to properly understand this figure, you need to look at two things separately: one is how Telegonus came to be told as the son of Odysseus and Circe, and the other is how that meeting came to be remembered as a story ending in death.

The Son Born on Circe's Island

There was a period when Odysseus stayed on Circe's island during his journey home. Telegonus is a figure connected to exactly that period, told in later tradition as the son of Circe and Odysseus.

However, no scene establishing this father-son relationship appears anywhere in the text of the Odyssey itself. The Odyssey, which follows Odysseus's story only up to the moment he leaves Circe's island, does not deal with whether a son was born afterward or how he grew up.

What fills this gap is not Homer but a later epic by another poet. And before you can properly read the rest of the story, you first need to know what that epic is and in what form it survives to us today.

An Epic Whose Original Text Is Lost, a Story Surviving Only Through Proclus's Summary

The work containing the story of Telegonus is called the Telegony. It is a two-book epic said to have been written by Eugamon, a poet from Cyrene, and it is the final work of the epic cycle, placed after the Odyssey.

The problem is that the original text of this work does not survive today. The plot we know now is passed down only through the summary left by the later scholar Proclus and the auxiliary materials later researchers compiled from it.

Since the original text itself is lost, we cannot be certain about any single version of detailed scenes or exact wording. The broad outlines—such as who was whose son and what events occurred—are confirmed by multiple overlapping sources, but details like the appearance of the weapon or what happened after the ending are preserved with slightly different wording in each summary and later quotation.

A Death That Happened Without Knowing It Was His Father

The key event conveyed by Proclus's summary is this: the grown Telegonus set out to find his father and eventually came face to face with Odysseus, but at that moment he had no idea that the man was his father.

The conflict that broke out in that state, the tradition tells, ended in Odysseus's death. Something that would never have happened had he known it was his father happened precisely because he did not know.

The tradition also comes with the explanation that the weapon Telegonus used had a tip made from the spine of a stingray. However, this weapon description is worded slightly differently in each summary and later quotation, so its exact form and origin cannot be definitively settled here.

What is certain is that the two men collided without recognizing each other, and the result was an irreversible death. It is also part of the tradition that Telegonus only later learned that the man he had killed was the father he had been searching for all his life.

Later traditions pass down a few more details about the ending that follows, but since the sources differ in details and translations, this will not be settled here. What can be said with certainty goes only this far: a father and son who did not recognize each other collided, and death was decided on the spot.

An Event Not in Book 24 of the Odyssey — Why the Distinction Matters

The Odyssey wraps up all 24 of its books with Odysseus returning to Ithaca after 20 years, reuniting with Penelope, punishing the suitors, and settling the aftermath. Nowhere in these 24 books does the event appear in which Telegonus shows up and brings his father to death.

That is because the event belongs not to the epic written by Homer but to an entirely different work dealing with what came after. So when you encounter stories related to Telegonus, this distinction is important.

If you opened the Odyssey wanting to know 'what became of Odysseus,' you will not find the story of Telegonus there. That ending lies in a separate tradition—one that survives only as a summary, its original text lost.

In the end, Telegonus is closer to a figure created by later poets who imagined what came after the homecoming, existing outside the story of Odysseus's return. And the fact that his story survives to this day is thanks to Proclus, a later scholar, who left us a summary. The very fact that a summary fills the place of a lost original text is something worth keeping in mind when reading this story.

Figures Leading into the Next Stories

The events Telegonus's mother Circe experienced with Odysseus can be explored in detail in the myth of Circe. The full course of Odysseus's homecoming after leaving Circe's island can be found in the plot of the Odyssey.

If you would like to look broadly at other traditions surrounding Odysseus's death, you can continue at the death of Odysseus. The story of Penelope, who remained in Ithaca after this event, is covered in the myth of Penelope.