Zeus and Alcmene: the Past of a Promising Myth

Abstract

Zeus’s love for Alcmene, the virtuous wife of Amphitryon, had the potential to justify the great success it enjoyed over the centuries. Motifs such as marital (in)fidelity, divine interference in the lives of men, the antithesis of truth / appearance were a challenge for a literary production in which theatre, both tragic and comic, had a special place.
It is our intention, in this brief synthesis of the tradition and literary realisations of this myth in Greek production, to evaluate some essential variants in the reading of the episode, taking particular account of the version staged by Euripides in his Alcmene.