King Teucer

In Greek mythology, King Teucer (also Teucrus) was said to have been the son of the river Scamander and of the nymph Idaea. Before the arrival of Dardanus, the land that would come to be called Dardania (and later still the Troad) was known as Teucria and the inhabitants as Teucrians, after Teucer.

According to Virgil, Teucer was originally from Crete but left that island during a great famine with a third part of its inhabitants. They settled near the Scamander river, apparently named after Teucer's father, not far from the Rhaetean promontory. However, Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that Teucer had come to the Troad from Attica where he was a chief of the Xypetȇ region. In both cases he ended up in the region which would be known as the Troad. The company is said to have been greatly annoyed by vast numbers of mice during the first night. Since Teucer had been directed by an oracle, before leaving Crete, to build a settlement in the place where he should be attacked in the night-time by an enemy spring from the earth or “where the earth-born should attack them”, he resolved to settle there. He probably founded the city of Hamaxitus and established it as his capital. Teucer is said to had a felicitous reign as he was successful in all of his undertakings. He is said to been the first to have built a temple to Apollo Sminthius or Apollo the "destroyer of mice" as that God is said to have destroyed the mice infesting that area during the reign of Teucer. Batea (also known as Batia or Arisba), King Teucer's daughter and only child, was given in marriage to Dardanus. In Lycophron's Alexandra, Dardanus was said to wed Arisba from “Crete's royal house”. Dardanus received land on Mount Ida from his father-in-law when Teucer died since he did not have a biological son. There Dardanus founded the city of Dardania. After Teucer's death his kingdom was incorporated in that of Dardanus and the entire region came to be known as Dardania. Yet in later times, the people of Troy often referred to themselves as "Teucrians". For example, Aeneas is called the “great captain of the Teucrians”. In most myths mentioning King Teucer, he is described as being a distant ancestor of the Trojans. Diodorus states that Teucer was “the first to rule as king over the land of Troy” while in the Aeneid, Anchises recalls him being the Trojans' “first forefather”. This suggests that King Teucer was considered the first figure to bear the bloodline of the Trojans as his father Scamander did not have such acclamations.