Rhadamanthys and Alcmene in Boeotia

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/255-rhadamanthys-alcmene-boeotia-apollodorus

Cycle: Heroes — after Heracles / Cretan lawgiver in Boeotia

Version line: Apollodorean / Pausanian — Rhadamanthys weds Alcmene; settles at Ocaleae or Haliartus

Sources: Apollodorus, *Library* 2.4.11, 3.1.2; Pausanias 9.32.4 (Haliartus tomb notices); cf. Homer, *Odyssey* 4.561–569 (Rhadamanthys in Elysium—distinct afterlife strand)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/255-rhadamanthys-alcmene-boeotia-apollodorus.md

Characters

Amphitryon — deceased first husband
Heracles — widow of Amphitryon; mother of Heracles
Iphicles — sons in Alcmene’s household (background)
Rhadamanthys — Cretan lawgiver; second husband of Alcmene
Zeus and Europa — parents of Rhadamanthys

Places

Elysium — alternate Homeric destiny of Rhadamanthys (cross-reference only)
Mount Helicon — settlement and local tomb traditions
Ortygia — Rhadamanthys’s origin

Themes

Narrative

After Amphitryon’s death, Alcmene married Rhadamanthys, the Cretan son of Zeus and Europa, famed for justice. Apollodorus places him as a fugitive from Crete who settled in Boeotia; Pausanias connects him with Haliartus. The marriage gives Alcmene a second consort after the father of Heracles’s mortal twin Iphicles, and it plants Cretan Rhadamanthys on Boeotian soil before (or beside) traditions that make him a judge in the underworld or a dweller in Elysium. Catalogue this Boeotian marriage-settlement apart from Minos’s Cretan kingship, apart from Sarpedon’s Lycia, and apart from the Homeric Elysian Rhadamanthys who awaits Menelaus.