A son of Perseus and Andromeda, and one of the five Perseid brothers who carried the founding house of Mycenae into the next generation. Through his son Amphitryon and his granddaughter Alcmena, Alcaeus stands at the head of the birth-saga of Heracles, who took from him his earliest name, Alcides.1
In Apollodorus' enumeration of the offspring Perseus fathered, Alcaeus is named among the brothers Sthenelus, Heleus, Mestor, and Electryon, beside the single daughter Gorgophone, whom Perieres married. The five sons divide the Perseid inheritance between them: Sthenelus would father Eurystheus, Electryon would father Alcmena, and Alcaeus would carry his own line toward Amphitryon.2
Alcaeus had a son, Amphitryon, and a daughter, Anaxo. The mother is unsettled even within a single telling: Apollodorus gives her as Astydamia, daughter of Pelops, but reports that some name Laonome, daughter of Guneus, and others Hipponome, daughter of Menoeceus.3
Pausanias too weighs the dispute over Amphitryon's mother, holding him to be the son of Alcaeus by Laonome of Pheneus, daughter of Guneus, and not by Lysidice, daughter of Pelops.4
Alcaeus' two lines knit the great birth-saga together. His daughter Anaxo was married by his brother Electryon and bore Alcmena, while his son Amphitryon became Alcmena's husband — so that Alcaeus stood as father of the one parent and grandfather of the other. From him the hero born in that house took his birth-name: before the Pythian priestess proclaimed him Heracles, he was called Alcides, after Alcaeus.5
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