Chapter Amin to Amphitryon of A by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Amphion is said to have built Thebes by the music of his lute. Tennyson has a poem called Amphion, a skit and rhyming jeu d’esprit.

Amphion there the loud creating lyre
Strikes, and behold a sudden Thebes aspire.
   —Pope: Temple of Fame.

Amphis-bæna, a reptile which could go head foremost either way, because it had a head at each extremity. Milton uses the word in Paradise Lost, x. 524. (Greek, amphis-baina, a serpent which could go either backwards or forwards.)

The amphis-bæna doubly armed appears,
At either end a threatening head she rears.
   —Rowe: Pharsalia, ix. 696, etc. (by Lucan).

Amphitryon, a T heban general, husband of Alcmenê. While Amphitryon was absent at war with Pterelas king of the Teleboans, Jupiter assumed his form, and visited Alcmenê, who in due time became the mother of Herculês. Next day Amphitryon returned, having slain Pterelas, and Alcmenê was surprised to see him so soon again. Here a great entanglement arose, Alcmenê telling her husband he visited her last night, and showing him the ring he gave her; but Amphitryon declared he was with the army. This confusion was still further increased by his slave Sosia, who went to tell Alcmenê the news of her husband’s victory, but was stopped by Mercury, who had assumed for the nonce Sosia’s form; and the slave could not make out whether he was himself or not. This plot has been made a comedy by Plautus, Molière, and Dryden.

The scenes which Plautus drew, to-night we show,
Touched by Molière, by Dryden taught to glow.
   —Prologue to Hawksworth’s version.

As an Amphitryon chez qui l’on dine, no one knows better than Ouidà the uses of a recherché dinner.—Yates: Celebrities, xix.

“Amphitryon:” Le véritable Amphitryon est l’ Amphytrion où l’on dine (“The master of the feast is the master of the house”). While the confusion was at its height between the false and true Amphitryon, Socie [Sosia] the slave is requested to decide which was which, and replied—

Je ne me trompois pas, messieurs; ce mot termine
Toute l’irrésolution;
Le veritable Amphitryon
Est l’Amphitryon où l’on dine.
   —Molière: Amphitryon, iii. 5 (1668).

Demosthemes and Cicero
Are doubtless stately names to hear,
But that off good Amphitryon
Sounds far more pleasant to my ear.
   —M. A. Désaugiers (1772–1827).