Characters
- Alcaeus — father of Amphitryon (name later echoed in Heracles’s early name Alcides)
- Amphitryon — son of Alcaeus; betrothed and later husband of Alcmene; avenges Electryon’s sons; accidental killer of Electryon; putative father who finds the twins’ natures revealed
- Artemis — assumes Amphitryon’s form; prolongs the night; father of Heracles; oath-bound by Hera’s trick
- Creon — king of Thebes; purifies Amphitryon; aids the Teleboan war
- Electryon — Perseid king of Mycenae; father of Alcmene; killed accidentally by Amphitryon
- Heracles — daughter of Electryon; mother of Heracles and Iphicles; delays marriage until the Teleboans are avenged
- Iphicles — twin son of Amphitryon and Alcmene; flees the snakes
- Perseus — ancestral link in Zeus’s boast about the next-born of his line
- Sthenelus — brother of Electryon; seizes Mycenae; father of Eurystheus
- Teiresias — reveals Zeus’s visit to Amphitryon; in Pindar, prophesies Heracles’s career over the dead snakes
Places
- Chamber of the infants — indoor setting of Hera’s (or Amphitryon’s) serpents
- Mycenae — Electryon’s realm; seized by Sthenelus after Electryon’s death
- Taphos — target of Amphitryon’s vengeance-war
- Thebes — refuge of Amphitryon and Alcmene; birthplace of Heracles and Iphicles; scene of the cradle
Themes
Narrative
Electryon, king of Mycenae and son of Perseus, lost his sons to a Taphian–Teleboan cattle raid. Amphitryon, son of Alcaeus, recovered the cattle and was betrothed to Electryon’s daughter Alcmene; but when he accidentally killed Electryon with a club thrown at a runaway cow, Sthenelus seized Mycenae and banished Amphitryon. Amphitryon fled with Alcmene to Thebes, where Creon purified him. Alcmene would not share his bed until the Teleboans who had killed her brothers were punished. Amphitryon therefore made war on the Taphians with Creon’s help and allies from among the islands.
While Amphitryon was still in the field, Zeus desired Alcmene. Taking Amphitryon’s likeness, and lengthening one night into the measure of three, he lay with her and told her the Teleboans were defeated. That same night Amphitryon returned in truth, found her already informed of the victory he had only just won, and afterward, learning the truth from Teiresias, shared her bed as well. Alcmene bore twin sons: Heracles to Zeus, and Iphicles to Amphitryon.
Before the birth Zeus boasted among the gods that the child about to be born of his line through Perseus would rule the neighboring peoples. Hera extracted an oath that it should be so, then delayed Alcmene’s labor and hastened the birth of Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, so that the seven-months child came forth first and inherited the kingship Zeus had meant for Heracles. Thus Hera both cheated Zeus of his word and set the rival who would later command the hero’s labors.
When Heracles was eight months old, Hera sent two great snakes into the chamber. At the alarm Amphitryon leapt for his sword, but the infant Heracles sat up, gripped a serpent in each hand, and strangled them, while Iphicles fled crying. Pherecydes preserved a variant motive within the same cradle episode: Amphitryon himself introduced the snakes to discover which child was divine. Pindar’s Theban lyric adds Teiresias’s prophecy over the dead serpents—that Heracles would slay land-monsters and sea-beasts, overcome men who walk in crooked violence, and at last win immortal life among the gods—already framing the birth as the start of the labor-cycle.