The Telephos Frieze on the north side of the courtyard: Constructing Auge’s boat

King Aleos of Tegea in Arkadia received a warning from the oracle of Apollo in Delphi that his daughter would bear offspring who would bring disaster to Aleos’ own sons. To forestall misfortune, Aleos made his daughter a priestess of Athena. But Herakles came to Tegea, met Auge, and had a son with her. Aleos tried again to avert his fate by exposing the child in the Parthenion mountains and building a barque in which to cast Auge out to sea [...]. In the frieze, four servants bend over the two sides of the wooden barque and apply their precisely rendered tools: a saw, drill, hammer, chisel, and plane. A man standing at left, possibly King Aleos himself, supervises their work. Auge cowers at the top of the panel, wrapped in her mantle, sitting on a rock. Two girls stand in front of her and look into an open chest. The motifs of a woman huddled in grief, servant girls, and a chest of jewellery or sacred fillets are drawn from the tradition of Classical Greek grave reliefs. Auge is portrayed as a mourner or even the deceased – yet she will be saved. A dolphin leads her barque to the coast of Mysia, where King Teuthras adopts her as a daughter.