The play opens in front of Heracles’s palace at Thebes, where Heracles’s family—his father Amphitryon, his wife Megara, and his three children—sit as suppliants before the altar of Zeus the Savior. The Prologue scene consists of two main parts. In the first part, Amphitryon details Heracles’s background in a monologue. He tells of Heracles’s lineage and his birth from the union of the god Zeus and his own wife Alcmene; how the family settled in Thebes after being banished from their homeland in Argos; how Heracles married Megara, the daughter of the Theban king Creon; how Heracles left to perform the famous twelve labors for Eurystheus in an effort to win his family’s return to Argos; and how the tyrant Lycus, having taken advantage of Heracles’s absence to kill Creon and take over Thebes, now plans to kill Heracles’s family.

In the second part of the Prologue, Megara addresses Amphitryon. In the dialogue that ensues, the two discuss their unhappy situation. Though Megara is already resigning herself to her and her children’s fate, Amphitryon advises her to hold on to hope that Heracles will return and reverse their fortunes.