This is a myth. They were extravagant individuals, of the class of those who count the chimes at midnight. Their father could not help them; and so the uncle, a bachelor, was expected to do his avuncular office, spend his substance for the benefit of his brother’s children, and get small thanks for his trouble. His brother, however, had an article of small value,--a daughter, named Alcmena; and this lady was given in marriage to her uncle, without any scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as the ceremony of the betrothal was over, Amphitryon departed to punish the Teleboans; and he had not been long absent, when Jupiter presented himself in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a household with the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became the father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper not to be wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio in a very cavalier way, as was his custom, and which they who are curious may see in the liveliest of the lively comedies of the miller’s man, Plautus.
An incident connected with the story shows us that Amphitryon, fond of good living generally, and of beef in particular, made a razzia among the Teleboan herds, and brought back all the cows and oxen he found amongst them. He was exhibiting the cattle to his brother Electryon, when one of the animals strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in order to bring it back, flung a stick at it, but with such violence, that the weapon, falling on the horns, rebounded as violently upon Electryon, who died upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have no doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion; for the Teleboan beef was famous for its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboës themselves were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned their Ætolian homes, and settled in the island of Capreæ.
The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They boast that his dinners at Memphis were divine, and that Hercules, his son, was among the last-born of the gods; for Hercules was more than a hero among the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, that the story of Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his hard fate, belongs to a more distant period and land. It is a Hindoo story, the actors are children of the sun, and Voltaire declares that the tale is to be found in Dow’s “Hindostan;” but that is as much of a fable as the legend itself of Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be as easily “Indicized” as that of Pythagoras.
In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distinguished by the title of “plagiary;” and an instance of the latter is here before us. When Plautus sat in his master’s mill, and thought over the subject of his lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphitryon, he took for granted all that he had been told of his hero’s birth and parentage. But the classical Amphitryon is, as I have said, but a stolen child. His home is in the far East; and his history was calling up smiles upon the faces of listeners by the Indus long before the twin founders of Rome had been intrusted, by their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo Amphitryon was a fellow of some renown, and here is his story.
A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to us,--but he was the individual whom the Greeks stole, and called Amphitryon,--lived many years ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic strength and stature; and he not only found the former a good thing to possess, but he used it _like_ a giant. He had for the wife of his bosom a fair, but fragile, girl, who lay in his embrace, as she sang to him at sunset, “like Hebe in Hercules’ arms.” It was not often, however, that such passages of peace embellished the course of their daily life. The Hindoo was jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. The lady had smiles for flatterers; and her monster of a husband had a stick, which showered blows upon her when he detected her neglecting her household work. Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in the more modern, and consequently more vulgar, case of Captain Wattle and Miss Roe; and finally there was much more of the first than there was of the last. One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic jealousy, assaulted his wife so ferociously, that he left her insensible on the threshold of their house, and threatened never again to keep up a _ménage_ with so incorrigible a partner.
A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order,--not the King of gods and men, as in the Grecian legend,--had witnessed the whole proceeding from his abiding place in a neighbouring cloud. He smiled as the husband disappeared; and, gradually descending in his little palace to the ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm set earth, gave a hurried glance at the unconscious and thickly-bruised beauty, and then, in testimony of his ecstatic delight, he clapped his hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, as D’Egville used to do, when Venua’s violin led the orchestra, and gave him strength.
The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought for a while, and speedily arrived at a resolution.