DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9184#0078
58
New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III.
historic age, for the Greek historians and poets all suppose
that the Mycenae of Atreus and Agamemnon lay within
the citadel walls.
We are told that sons of Perseus ruled both at Tiryns
and at Mycenae. In the tale that Hcrakles, who was a
Perseid prince of Tiryns, was obliged to serve Eurystheus,
the hereditary ruler of Mycenae, we seem to find an indi-
cation that of the two cities Mycenae was the more im-
portant ; and that it was larger is abundantly clear from
the testimony of excavation.
According to the legends, only two generations inter-
vened between Perseus and the accession at Mycenae of
the Phrygian stranger Pelops, who established there a new
dynasty. It is not necessary that I should here repeat the
story of Pelops, one of the most brilliant and celebrated
figures in early Greek mythology.* Everyone knows how
he came from the district near Smyrna and Mount Sipylus,
with his followers and his treasures of gold, how he won
his bride Hippodameia in a chariot-race at Olympia, and
how he gradually succeeded, according to Thucydides, by
means of his great wealth, in acquiring dominion in the
southern peninsula of Greece, thenceforward known by his
name as Peloponnesus. Before the time of Pelops the
legends of Argolis are vague and confused, but henceforth
they become more consistent, and bear at least the out-
ward appearance of history. Atreus was the son of Pelops
by his Greek bride, and his son Agamemnon, king of
Mycenae, is the hero who shines out so nobly in the Iliad,
and who on his return from Troy fell a victim to the
intrigues of his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour, his
cousin Aegisthus. According to the story, Aegisthus held
the throne for seven years, but in the eighth he was put to
death by Orestes, whc succeeded not only to the kingdom
* It is given in the seventh chapter of Grote's History of Greece,
and in all the Dictionaries.
New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III.
historic age, for the Greek historians and poets all suppose
that the Mycenae of Atreus and Agamemnon lay within
the citadel walls.
We are told that sons of Perseus ruled both at Tiryns
and at Mycenae. In the tale that Hcrakles, who was a
Perseid prince of Tiryns, was obliged to serve Eurystheus,
the hereditary ruler of Mycenae, we seem to find an indi-
cation that of the two cities Mycenae was the more im-
portant ; and that it was larger is abundantly clear from
the testimony of excavation.
According to the legends, only two generations inter-
vened between Perseus and the accession at Mycenae of
the Phrygian stranger Pelops, who established there a new
dynasty. It is not necessary that I should here repeat the
story of Pelops, one of the most brilliant and celebrated
figures in early Greek mythology.* Everyone knows how
he came from the district near Smyrna and Mount Sipylus,
with his followers and his treasures of gold, how he won
his bride Hippodameia in a chariot-race at Olympia, and
how he gradually succeeded, according to Thucydides, by
means of his great wealth, in acquiring dominion in the
southern peninsula of Greece, thenceforward known by his
name as Peloponnesus. Before the time of Pelops the
legends of Argolis are vague and confused, but henceforth
they become more consistent, and bear at least the out-
ward appearance of history. Atreus was the son of Pelops
by his Greek bride, and his son Agamemnon, king of
Mycenae, is the hero who shines out so nobly in the Iliad,
and who on his return from Troy fell a victim to the
intrigues of his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour, his
cousin Aegisthus. According to the story, Aegisthus held
the throne for seven years, but in the eighth he was put to
death by Orestes, whc succeeded not only to the kingdom
* It is given in the seventh chapter of Grote's History of Greece,
and in all the Dictionaries.