The abandoned Telephus being suckled by a deer was a frequent iconographic motif. Except for the Telephus frieze, which depicts the abandoned Telephus being suckled by a lioness, every other depiction of this event shows Telephus suckled by a deer. The earliest such representations occur on East-Ionian engraved gems (c. 480 BC), depicting the infant Telephus keeling or crawling under a standing deer, grasping the deer's teats. Nearly identical scenes appears on Tegeatic coins from about 370 BC. Pausanias reports seeing an image of Telephus suckled by a deer on Mount Helicon in Boeotia. Representations showing Heracles finding Telephus with a deer are also frequent from the first century AD. The scene continued to be popular through the third century AD.