A son of Perseus and Andromeda and a king of the Perseid house, Electryon is the hinge through which the line of Perseus passes into the line of Heracles: father of Alcmene, he is the maternal grandfather of the hero, though he died before the hero was born.1
Apollodorus counts Electryon among the sons Perseus and Andromeda begot at Mycenae, alongside Alcaeus, Sthenelus, Heleus, and Mestor, with their sister Gorgophone. He married Anaxo, daughter of his brother Alcaeus, who bore him a daughter, Alcmene, and nine sons; afterward a Phrygian woman, Midea, bore him a bastard son, Licymnius.2
Pausanias places his seat at Medea near Argos and names him plainly the father of Alcmene, though in the traveller's time nothing of the town survived but its foundations.3
While Electryon reigned over Mycenae, the sons of Pterelaus came with Taphians to claim the kingdom of Mestor, their maternal grandfather; when the king paid them no heed, they drove off his cattle. His sons stood to the herds, and in the fighting both bands fell in mutual slaughter, only the young Licymnius surviving.4
Apollonius set the same ruin on Jason's woven cloak: in a well-wooded ox-pasture the Teleboae and the sons of Electryon fought over the oxen, the few herdsmen overmastered by the Taphian raiders, the dewy meadow drenched with blood.5
Bent on avenging his sons and recovering the kine, Electryon entrusted both his kingdom and his daughter Alcmene to Amphitryon, son of his brother Alcaeus, binding him by oath to keep her a virgin until his return. But as the king was taking back the recovered cows, one charged; Amphitryon flung the club in his hand at her, the club rebounded from the cow's horns and, striking Electryon's head, killed him. Apollodorus tells it so as pure mischance, and on this pretext Sthenelus banished Amphitryon from all Argos and seized the thrones of Mycenae and Tiryns.6
Hyginus, listing men who slew their kin, states the deed bare, without manner: 'Amphitryon killed Electryon, son of Perseus.'7
Pausanias records the aftermath at Thebes, where the ruins of a house were shown in which Amphitryon came to live, exiled from Tiryns because of the death of Electryon; and at Argos he marks the grave of the king's surviving son, Licymnius.8
Through his daughter Alcmene the dead king fathered the hero-line he never saw: Zeus, in the likeness of Amphitryon, lay with her, and she bore Heracles, the elder by one night and son of Zeus, and Iphicles, son of Amphitryon. Electryon is thus the maternal grandfather of the divine and mortal twins.9
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