Amphitryon was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis, and a figure of Greek mythology best known as the husband of Alcmene and the mortal stepfather of Heracles. After accidentally killing his prospective father-in-law Electryon, king of Mycenae, he was driven into exile and fled with Alcmene to Thebes. There he was purified, avenged Alcmene's slain brothers in a campaign against the Taphians, and married her; the twins she bore, Iphicles and Heracles, had different fathers — Iphicles by Amphitryon and Heracles by Zeus, who had visited Alcmene disguised as her husband. His story became the source of a long literary tradition, most famously the comedies of Plautus and Molière.
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I.Family
Amphitryon was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis. His mother is given variously as Astydameia, the daughter of Pelops and Hippodamia; as Laonome, daughter of Guneus; or as Hipponome, daughter of Menoeceus.
He was the brother of Anaxo, wife of Electryon, and of Perimede, wife of Licymnius. He married Alcmene, the daughter of Electryon, becoming the stepfather of the hero Heracles. By Alcmene he was the father of Iphicles and of a daughter named Laonome.
II.Mythology
Born in Tiryns, in Argolis in the eastern part of the Peloponnese, Amphitryon became King of Troezen and regent of Mycenae, and was a friend of Panopeus.
Having accidentally killed his prospective father-in-law, Electryon, king of Mycenae, Amphitryon was driven out of Mycenae by Electryon's brother, Sthenelus. An earlier tradition holds that he killed Electryon in a fit of anger over some cattle. He fled with Alcmene to Thebes, where he was cleansed of the guilt of blood by Creon, king of Thebes.
Alcmene, who was pregnant and had been betrothed to Amphitryon by her father, refused to marry him until he had avenged the deaths of her brothers, all but one of whom had fallen in battle against the Taphians; it was on his return from this expedition that Electryon had been killed. Amphitryon accordingly took the field against the Taphians, accompanied by Creon, who agreed to help on condition that Amphitryon first slay the Teumessian fox sent by Dionysus to ravage the Theban countryside.
The Taphians remained invincible until Comaetho, the king's daughter, out of love for Amphitryon, plucked out the single golden hair of her father Pterelaos, whose possession had rendered him immortal. Having defeated the enemy, Amphitryon put Comaetho to death and handed the kingdom of the Taphians over to Cephalus.
On his return to Thebes, Amphitryon married Alcmene, who gave birth to the twin sons Iphicles and Heracles. Only Iphicles was his son: in a case of heteropaternal superfecundation, Heracles was the son of Zeus, who had visited Alcmene during Amphitryon's absence. Disguised as Amphitryon, Zeus described the victory over the sons of Pterelaos in such convincing detail that Alcmene accepted him as her betrothed.
Amphitryon fell in battle against the Minyans, against whom he had undertaken an expedition, accompanied by the youthful Heracles, to deliver Thebes from a disgraceful tribute. In Euripides' play Heracles, however, Amphitryon survives to witness the murders of Heracles' children and wife.
III.Dramatic Treatments
Amphitryon was the title of a lost tragedy by Sophocles, but most later writers have given the story comic treatment. The Roman comedian Plautus turned the tale into a burlesque play, Amphitryon, which enjoyed a lasting stage presence: it was the only play by Plautus still performed during the Middle Ages, albeit in modified form, was staged regularly during the Renaissance, and was the second ancient comedy translated into English.
Plautus' play inspired numerous later works, including Spanish, Italian and Portuguese versions in the 16th century. Jean Rotrou's French adaptation Les Deux Sosies (1636) led to Molière's highly successful Amphitryon (1668). From Molière's line "Le véritable Amphitryon est l'Amphitryon où l'on dîne," the name came to mean a generous host or entertainer — the Spanish anfitrión and Portuguese anfitrião derive from it.
In England, an interlude in Jacke Juggler (ca. 1550) was loosely based on Plautus, as was part of John Marston's What You Will (1607); the first large-scale English work drawing chiefly on Plautus was Thomas Heywood's The Silver Age (1613). John Dryden's Amphitryon (1690), based on both Molière and Plautus, added music by Henry Purcell and the character of Phaedra.
In Germany, Heinrich von Kleist's Amphitryon (1807) — begun as a translation of Molière but developed into an original adaptation — remains the most frequently performed version, using Alcmene's inability to distinguish Jupiter from her husband to explore metaphysical themes; Giselher Klebe based his 1961 opera Alkmene on it. Other treatments include Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 (1929), whose title whimsically estimates how often the story had been staged before, the anti-Nazi 1935 film Amphitryon based on Kleist, and modern works such as Ignacio Padilla's novel Amphitryon (2000).