Amphitryon or Amphitruo is a Latin play for the early Roman theatre by playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. It is Plautus’s only play on a mythological subject. The play is mostly extant, but has a large missing section in its latter portion. The plot of the play involves Amphitryon’s jealous and confused reaction to Alcmena’s seduction by Jupiter, and ends with the birth of Hercules. There is a subplot in which Jupiter's son Mercury, keeping watch outside the house while his father is inside, has fun teasing first Amphitryon's servant Sosia, and then Amphitryon himself. The play is thought to be relatively late in Plautus's works, probably from the period 190–185 BC. One indication of this is the large amount of sung verse. Another is the description of Alcumena in line 703 as a bacchant, which may be connected with the Senate decree on Bacchanalia of 186 BC. The mention of another play in lines 91–2 may be a reference to Ennius's play Ambracia of 188. The character Mercury describes this play as a tragicomoedia (lines 59, 63). One theory is that Plautus based his play on a Greek tragedy, such as Euripides Alcmene, turning it into a comedy by additions of his own; however, this is not certain.

Plot

Amphitryon begins with a prologue given by the god Mercury, in which he gives some background information to the audience. Amphitryon and his slave Sosia have been away at war and are returning to Thebes. Meanwhile, the god Jupiter is sleeping with Amphitryon's wife Alcmena. Jupiter is in the guise of Amphitryon so that Alcmena is unaware that he is not her husband. Mercury's job is to buy his father Jupiter some time by deceiving those who would interfere. He changes his appearance to look like the slave Sosia, and when the real Sosia arrives, he beats him up and sends him away from the house. Thoroughly confused by having been beat up by himself, Sosia returns to the ship to relay what happened to his master Amphitryon. The following morning, Amphitryon sets off for the house, annoyed by his slave's foolish-sounding story. Jupiter departs only moments before Amphitryon arrives, and when Alcmena sees her real husband, she is confused as to why he has returned so quickly. Amphitryon doesn't appreciate this strange welcome after being gone for so many months, and confusion turns to anger and jealousy after learning that she has slept with a man who is not himself. He goes off to the harbour to fetch a witness. Now Jupiter returns to enjoy a second session with Alcmena. He calms her anger and sends her into the house. Before going in to join her he orders his son Mercury to keep Amphitryon away. Mercury seizes the opportunity to have more fun, this time teasing Amphitryon by throwing water and a tile at him from the roof of the house. (There are some missing pages in the text at this point.) A nurse comes out and reports that Alcmena has miraculously given birth to twin boys. One is the son of Amphitryon, the other is Hercules, the son of Jupiter. To quell Amphitryon's anger, Jupiter now returns and explains to Amphitryon what he did. Amphitryon is then honored to have shared his wife with a god.

Metrical structure

Plautus's plays are traditionally divided into five acts; these are referred to here for convenience, since many editions make use of them. However, it is not thought that they go back to Plautus's time, since no manuscript contains them before the 15th century. Also, the acts themselves do not always match the structure of the plays, which is more clearly shown by the variation in metres. The usual metrical pattern is to begin each section with iambic senarii (which were spoken without music), then a song (canticum) in various metres, and finally each section is rounded off by trochaic septenarii, which were apparently recited to the accompaniment of tibiae (a pair of reed pipes). Moore calls this the "ABC succession", where A = iambic senarii, B = other metres, and C = trochaic septenarii. Metrically this play can be divided into five sections, each section having two parts, as follows: An unusual metrical feature of the play is the large number of lines of iambic octonarii, more than any other Plautus play. The octonarii occur especially in the two messenger speeches, one describing Amphitruo's battle, and the other describing the birth of Hercules, each of which has a similar pattern of (a) iambic octonarii (type a), (b) other metres, (c) iambic octonarii (type b). Another passage of iambic octonarii is Mercury's gleeful speech in act 3 (lines 984–1005), anticipating the fun he is going to have teasing Amphitruo.

Mercury teases Sosia

Jupiter departs

Amphitruo is annoyed with Sosia

Amphitruo is annoyed with Alcumena

Jupiter returns

Mercury teases Amphitruo

Amphitruo's distress again

Alcumena gives birth

Jupiter explains

Adaptations

The plot of Amphitryon was adapted in the 1550s into Jack Juggler, one of the earliest examples of English comedy. In 1621 the German poet laureate Joannes Burmeister published a Neo-Latin adaptation, titled Mater-Virgo (The Virgin Mother), about the Nativity of Jesus. In it Amphitryon became Joseph, Alcmena became the Virgin Mary, and Sosia became the angel Gabriel. The last known copy of the book went missing from the Berlin library in World War II and exists now only in fragments.

Translations