A king of Thebes and the husband of Alcmene.
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A king of Thebes and the husband of Alcmene.
Amphitryon, in Greek myth, son of Alcaeus king of Tiryns, and Astydameia; grandson of Perseus. His sister Anaxo married her uncle Electryon (brother of Alcaeus), king of Mycenae, and their daughter Alcmena was betrothed to Amphitryon. After the death of his sons in a feud Electryon handed over his kingdom to Amphitryon, but the latter, while helping to recover stolen cattle, unfortunately killed Electryon and so had to take refuge with Creon, king of Thebes. Alcmena wished Amphitryon to avenge her brothers before she would marry him, and this he did; but during his absence Zeus fell in love with her and just before Amphitryon's return visited her in the guise of her husband. Alcmena gave birth to twin sons, Iphiclēs the child of Amphitryon and Heracles the child of Zeus.
Three-act comedy in free verse by Molière, first performed 1668. It is an adaptation of a plot used also by Plautus and Rotrou. The Greek general Amphitryon is married to Alcmène; his servant Sosie is married to Cléanthis. Jupiter desires Alcmène and adopts the physical guise of Amphitryon to obtain her favours, while Mercury adopts that of Sosie. The play exploits the confusions of identity which arise; it ends with the exposure of the double subsitution. Amphitryon is comforted by the maxim that ‘un partage avec Jupiter n'a rien du tout qui déshonore’. The play is often said to allude to the affair of Louis XIV with Madame de Montespan.
The same subject is treated, supposedly for the thirty-eighth time, in Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38.
[Ian Maclean]
Amphitryon, or Amphitrion, in
Amphitryon ("harassing either side") was a
Having accidentally killed his uncle
Alcmene, who is pregnant and had been betrothed to Amphitryon by her father, refused to marry him until he had avenged the death of her brothers, all of whom except one 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 had agreed to assist him on condition that he slew the Teumessian fox which had been sent by Dionysus to ravage the country.
The Taphians, however, remained invincible until Comaetho,
the king's daughter, out of love for Amphitryon cut off her father's golden hair, the possession of which rendered him immortal.
Having defeated the enemy, Amphitryon put Comaetho to death and handed over the kingdom of the Taphians to
While Amphitryon was gone,
He 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. According to Euripides (Hercules Furens) he survived this expedition, and was slain by his son in his madness.
Amphitryon was the title of a lost tragedy of Sophocles, but most dramatic
treatments are comic. Plautus, the Roman comedian, used this tale to present a burlesque play. The episode of Zeus and Alcmene similarly forms the subject of comedies by Camões and
John Dryden's 1690 Amphitryon is based on
In France, the myth was the subject of a play by
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