Teucer: The Greek Mythologies of Characters Who Bore That Name
Teucer of Salamis was one of the elite Greek warriors who survived the Trojan War through sheer skill and determination. He was a fine archer whose arrows never failed to miss their marks and was believed to have killed 30 Trojan warriors. On the other hand, King Teucer of Troad was the legendary founder of the Trojan kingdom. This article will explore the origins, families, and exploits of both Teucers according to Greek mythology.
Teucer, the Great Archer
The Family of Teucer
This Teucer was born to Telamon and Hesione, King and Queen of the Island of Salamis. He was the half-brother of another Greek hero, Ajax the Great, because his mother Hesione happened to be the second wife of King Telamon. Teucer’s uncle was Priam, the King of Troy, thus his cousins were Hector and Paris. Later in the myth, he fell in love with and married the Cyprian princess, Eune, with whom they had their only daughter Asteria.
Teucer Greek Mythology
Teucer fought in the Trojan war by unleashing his fierce arrows while standing behind the huge shield of his half-brother, Ajax. Teucer and Ajax inflicted so much damage on the Trojan forces that they became one of their prime targets. His skill with the bow and arrow impressed everyone, including his enemies, and his collaboration with Ajax was a great success.
Teucer’s Encounter With Hector
It was narrated in the Iliad that once, when Hector of Troy led an army to drive the Greeks back to their ships, Teucer stood his ground and stopped them by killing Hector’s charioteer. While Hector’s chariot was down, he aimed at several Trojan champions and took them out one after the other.
Teucer then turned his attention to Hector, whom he shot several arrows at but surprisingly, they all missed their target. This baffled Teucer, but little did he know that Apollo, the god of prophecy, was on Hector’s side, deflecting all the arrows.
This was because the gods took sides during the war, and Apollo was part of the deities who supported the Trojans. Zeus, who also sided with the Trojans, broke Teucer’s bow to prevent him from inflicting damage on Hector.
The god’s intervention spared Hector’s life. Once his life was spared and seeing the damage that Teucer inflicted on his army, Hector looked for a way to bring Teucer down, and he found one.
He threw a stone at the archer, which hit him on the arm, temporarily causing Teucer to lose his shooting abilities. Teucer took up a spear and ran towards Hector to challenge him to a fight with his arm injured. Hector threw his weapon at him but missed by a hair’s breadth. Ajax and Teucer then commanded their troops to give their all in repelling the Trojan attack from all sides.
The Trojans Finally Retreat
The battle ended when Patroclus appeared in Achilles’ armor, which struck fear in the hearts of the Trojans and they finally retreated. This was because they thought it was Achilles, whom they greatly feared for his mother, Thetis, who had made him almost invincible.
Teucer’s Exploits During the Trojan War
According to Homer, Teucer killed about 30 Trojan warriors, including Aretaon, Ormenus, Daetor, Melenippus, Prothoon, Amopaon, and Lycophantes. In addition, he inflicted a severe wound on Glaucus, the Lycian captain, which forced him to withdraw from the war. However, when Glaucus realized that his Prince, Sarpedon, had been wounded, he prayed to Apollo to help rescue him. Apollo obliged and healed his wound of Glaucus so he could go and save his friend.
Glaucus then called on other Trojan warriors and formed a human wall around the dying Sarpedon so the gods could whisk him away. Teucer’s half-brother later killed Glaucus in a fight over the corpse of Achilles. To prevent the desecration of Glaucus’ corpse, Aeneas, Hector’s cousin, rescued the body and handed it over to Apollo, who took it to Lycia for burial.
Teucer Insists On The Burial of Ajax
Later, when Ajax killed himself, Teucer guarded his body and saw that it received a proper burial. Menelaus and Agamemnon objected to burying Ajax’s corpse because they accused him of plotting to kill them. Ajax had indeed planned to murder them because he felt he deserved the armor of Achilles after the two kings (Menelaus and Agamemnon) had awarded it to Odysseus.
However, Ajax’s plan failed as the gods tricked him into killing the cattle the Greeks had gotten from the war. Athena, the goddess of war, disguised the cattle as humans and hoodwinked Ajax into slaughtering them. Thus, Ajax thought he killed Agamemnon and Menelaus by slaughtering the cattle and their herders. Later, he came to his senses and realized the terrible harm he had caused and he wept.
He felt ashamed and committed suicide by falling on his sword but not without calling for vengeance against Menelaus and Agamemnon. That was why the two kings refused to bury his corpse as a form of punishment and to deter anyone who may have been harboring similar thoughts.
Teucer, however, insisted that his half-brother be given a proper burial to enable his soul to cross to the Underworld, insulting the two kings. Finally, the kings allowed Ajax to be given a proper burial.
The King of Salamis Banishes Teucer
When Teucer returned home, his father, King Telamon, put him on trial for returning without his brother’s body or arms. King Telamon found him guilty of negligence and banished him from the island of Salamis. Therefore, Teucer sailed from the island on a quest to find a new home. He came into contact with King Belus of Tyre who eventually convinced him to join his campaign in the land of Cyprus.
King Belus and Teucer led the troops in conquering the Island of Cyprus then Belus handed Cyprus over to Teucer and thanked him for his assistance. There Teucer founded a new city and called it Salamis, after the island of Salamis, his home state. He then married his wife Eune, the Cyprian king’s daughter, and the couple gave birth to their daughter Asteria.
The Mythology of King Teucer
The Family of Teucer
This Teucer, also known as Teucrus, was the son of the river god Scamander and his wife Idaea, a nymph from Mount Ida. The ancient Greeks credited him as the founder of Teucria, a land that later became known as Troy.
The Roman poet, Virgil, narrated that Teucer was originally from the Island of Crete but fled with a third of the Cretans when the island was plagued with a great famine. They arrived at the Scamander river in Troad, named after Teucer’s father, and settled there.
However, according to the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Teucer was a chief of the Xypete region in Attica before moving to Troad (which later became Troy). Before leaving for Troad, Teucer had consulted an oracle who advised him to settle in a place where an enemy from the earth would attack him.
Thus, on the night they arrived at the Scamander River, they encountered a host of mice that made their lives uncomfortable. Teucer interpreted the presence of the mice to mean “an enemy from the earth”. Therefore he settled there according to the oracle’s advice.
Furthermore, he eventually became the king of Troad and later the first king to rule the city of Troy. Teucer then built the town of Hamaxitus and made it the capital of Troad. He undertook several successful projects including building a temple in honor of Apollo, the god of prophecy.
The temple was known as Apollo Smintheus and was built to thank the god for destroying the mice they initially encountered when they first settled in Troad. Teucer was said to have a happy reign and had a daughter named Batea whom he allowed to marry Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra.
How Dardanus Met King Teucer
According to Virgil’s Aeneid, Dardanus was a Tyrrhenian prince whose father was King Corythus of Tarquinha, and his mother was Electra. He came from Hesperia (modern Italy) and journeyed to Troad where he met King Teucer.
However, in the account of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dardanus hailed from Arcadia where he was king alongside his elder brother Iasus. While in Arcadia, he got married to Chryse, the daughter of Prince Pallas.
The couple gave birth to two sons Idaeus and Deimas and lived happily until a great flood displaced the majority of the Arcadian population. Some decided to leave Arcadia and those who remained made Deimas their king. Dardanus and his brother Iasus sailed to the Greek island of Samothrace where Zeus killed Iasus for sleeping with his consort Demeter. Dardanus and his people set sail for Troad after they discovered that the land could hardly support agricultural activities.
There he met Teucer and got married to his daughter Batea. Some versions of the myth do not mention what happened to Dardanus’ first wife, Chryse but Dionysius had long perished. Dardanus and Batea gave birth to three sons– Ilus, Erichthonius, and Zacynthus with one daughter, Idaea. Erichthonius later became king after Ilus had died during the reign of his father, Dardanus.
Teucer’s Death and Legacy
Teucer then gave Dardanus land at the foot of Mount Ida where he established the city of Dardania. Soon, the city grew and after Teucer’s death, he joined the two cities under one name, Dardania. However, the Trojans still maintained the name Teucrian down the line, after their forefather, King Teucer. For instance, some literary works referred to Ainieas the Trojan captain as the great captain of the Teucrians.
Most ancient myths credit King Teucer as the ancestor of the Trojans and not his father Scamander. However, the reason Scamander was not given such acclamations remains unclear.
The Modern Legacy of Teucer
Pontevedra in the Galicia region of Spain traces its foundations to Teucer. Pontevedra is sometimes referred to as “The city of Teucer” It is believed that Greek traders who settled in that region told stories of the Greek hero, resulting in the city being named after him.
The people of the city are also occasionally referred to as Teucrinos, after a variant of the name Teucer. Several sporting clubs in the region are either named after Teucer or use variants of his name.
Teucer is also an NPC in the role-playing video game Genshin Impact. Teucer Genshin Impact appears in Tartglia’s Story Quest and he is a young boy who hails from the region of Snezhnaya in Teyvat. He has a freckled face, orange hair and blue eyes and has no combat skills. Teucer’s Genshin impact age is not specified but he is young, probably in his pre-teens. Teucer x Childe ( also known as Tartaglia) are brothers with Childe being the older one.
Teucer Pronunciation
The name is pronounced as |ti -oo-sah| and though the meaning of the name is shrouded in uncertainty some modern translations give the meaning as ‘archer’.
Conclusion:
So far, we’ve studied the mythologies involving two ancient Greek characters called Teucer; one from Salamis and the other from Attica. Here is a summary of all that we’ve discovered about them:
- The first Teucer was the son of King Telamon and Queen Hesione and he had a half-brother named Ajax.
- Together with his brother Ajax, they warded off waves of attack from the Trojans with Teucer’s arrows inflicting the most damage.
- This Teucer survived the Trojan War but was banished from the land by his father for refusing to return with the corpse of his half-brother, Ajax who is usually called the Greater to distinguish him from Ajax the lesser.
- The other Teucer was the King and founder of Troy after fleeing floods in his home city and settling in Troad.
- He came into contact with Dardanus who later married his daughter and birthed four children.
Dardanus went on to inherit Teucer’s kingdom after his death and incorporated it into his own kingdom, naming it Dardania.
