Greek Texts & Translations

and, the middle of Argos; ^note
Od. i. 344. and, to rule over many islands, and the whole of Argos. ^note
Il. ii. 108. Argos, among modern writers, denotes a plain, but not once in Homer. It seems rather a Macedonian and Thessalian use of the word. 10

After the descendants of Danaus had succeeded to the sovereignty at Argos, and the Amythaonidae, who came from Pisatis and Triphylia, were intermixed with them by marriages, it is not surprising that, being allied to one another, they at first divided the country into two kingdoms, in such a manner that the two cities, the intended capitals, Argos and Mycenae, were not distant from each other more than 50 stadia, and that the Heraeum at Mycenae should be a temple common to both. In this temple were the statues the workmanship of Polycletus. In display of art they surpassed all others, but in magnitude and cost they were inferior to those of Pheidias.

At first Argos was the most powerful of the two cities. Afterwards Mycenae received a great increase of inhabitants in consequence of the migration thither of the Pelopidae. For when everything had fallen under the power of the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon, the elder, assumed the sovereign authority, and by good fortune and valour annexed to his possessions a large tract of country. He also added the Laconian to the Mycenaean district. ^note Menelaus had Laconia, and Agamemnon Mycenae, and the country as far as Corinth, and Sicyon, and the territory which was then said to be the country of Iones and Aegialians, and afterwards of Achaei.

After the Trojan war, when the dominion of Agamemnon was at an end, the declension of Mycenae ensued, and particularly after the return of the Heracleidae. ^note For when these people got possession of Peloponnesus, they expelled its former masters, so that they who had Argos possessed Mycenae likewise, as composing one body. In subsequent times Mycenae was razed by the Argives, so that at present not even a trace is to be discovered of the city of the Mycenaeans. ^note