Daughter of the Perseid king Electryon and wife of her cousin Amphitryon, Alcmene was the woman whom Zeus, taking her husband's likeness, lay with to beget Heracles. To her belong both the divine and the mortal sons: Heracles by Zeus, and Iphicles by Amphitryon, younger by a single night.1
In the Perseid house, Perseus by Andromeda fathered in Mycenae Alcaeus, Sthenelus, Heleus, Mestor, and Electryon, along with one daughter, Gorgophone. Alcaeus begot Amphitryon, while his brother Electryon begot Alcmene — so that her father and the husband she would take were first cousins, both grandsons of Perseus.2
When Electryon prepared to make war on the Teleboans in vengeance for his slain sons, he committed the kingdom of Mycenae to Amphitryon together with his daughter Alcmene, binding him by oath to keep her a virgin until his return; of Electryon's many sons only the still-young Licymnius survived.3
Before Amphitryon could come to her bed, Zeus came by night, drew out the one night threefold, and assumed the very likeness of her husband to lie with Alcmene. When Amphitryon arrived after, she learned from Tiresias that Zeus had enjoyed her. So she bore two sons one night apart: Heracles, begotten by Zeus and elder, and Iphicles, begotten by Amphitryon.4
Homer set her in the catalogue of heroines beheld in the underworld — "Alcmene, wife of Amphitryon, who lay in the arms of great Zeus, and bore Heracles, staunch in fight, the lion-hearted" — naming in a single breath the husband she wed and the god by whom she conceived.5
Hesiod too makes her motherhood the hero's title of glory: it is "the valiant son of shapely-ankled Alcmene," the Theban-born, who slays the eagle that fed on Prometheus and frees him — not without the will of Olympian Zeus, that the glory of Heracles might be the greater.6
The paternity her sons divide is the war the sources never settle. Homer marks the day "when Alcmene in fair-crowned Thebe was to bring forth the mighty Heracles," yet the same poet also names him simply "son of Amphitryon," reared as the mortal man's child. Alcmene as mother alone stands undisputed.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
