Amphitryon and Alcmene. When the eight sons of Electryon, king of Mycenae, were killed by the Taphians in a raid on the king’s cattle, Electryon went off to seek revenge, leaving his dominion in the care of his nephew, Amphitryon, with the promise that Amphitryon could wed his daughter Alcmene if he ruled well. Amphitryon fulfilled the charge and even recovered the king’s cattle, but accidentally killed Electryon in an ensuing dispute. Amphitryon was banished to Thebes, where Alcmene refused him his conjugal rights until he had avenged the death of her brothers. Amphitryon launched a successful campaign against the Taphians, but before he returned from battle, Zeus (Jupiter) visited Alcmene in her husband’s guise and seduced her. The next day Amphitryon returned victoriously and consummated the marriage. Alcmene gave birth to twin sons, Heracles and Iphicles, one day apart; Iphicles was Amphitryon’s child and Heracles was the son of Zeus. Treatments of this story are rare in the visual arts, but it is popular in opera and drama. Most postclass-ical versions are based on the Roman playwright Plautus’s comedy Amphitruo, in which Mercury and his servant Sosia are involved in the complex plot. Classical Sources. Homer, Iliad 19.96-133. Hesiod, Theogony 943f.; Shield of Heracles 1—56. Euripides, Heracles. Plautus, Amphitruo. Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.112, 9.273—323. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 2.4.5-11. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.11.1-3. Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead n, “Diogenes and Heracles”; Dialogues of the Gods 14, “Hermes and Helios.” Further Reference. Charles E. Passage and James H. Mantinband, Amphitryon: Three Plays in New Verse Translations . . . Together with a Comprehensive Account of the Evolution of the Legend and Its Subsequent History on the Stage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974). L. R. Shero, “Alcmena and Amphitryon in Ancient and Modern Drama,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 87 (1956): 192—238. See also Heracles, Birth.