Mycenae — City Rich in Gold

Why Mycenae has its name

The Greeks gave several explanations for the name, and Pausanias, who visited the ruins in the second century AD, collects them. One says that Perseus lost the cap (mykes) of his scabbard there and took it as a sign to found a city. Another says he was thirsty, pulled up a mushroom (also mykes), and drank from the water that ran out from beneath it. A third tradition, which Pausanias found in the epic Eoiai, names the city after a heroine, Mycene, daughter of the river-god Inachus. Homer mentions a Mycene among the famous women of old in the Odyssey. Pausanias also saw the spring called Perseia inside the walls. Archaeologists have found a real underground cistern at the north-east corner of the citadel, reached by a stepped passage cut through the walls in the thirteenth century BC.

Before Atreus: the Perseid kings

Mycenae had a whole dynasty before the house of Atreus. Perseus's sons Electryon and Sthenelus ruled in turn. Electryon was the father of Alcmene, which makes Perseus the great-grandfather of Heracles. The Iliad tells how Hera tricked Zeus into swearing that a descendant of his born that day would rule the people around him. She then delayed Heracles' birth and hurried on the birth of Sthenelus's son Eurystheus, so that Eurystheus became king of Mycenae and Heracles had to serve him. This is the setup for the Twelve Labours, with Eurystheus giving orders from the Argolid and, in a well-known vase scene, hiding in a storage jar when Heracles brings back the Erymanthian boar.

When Eurystheus died fighting the sons of Heracles, the Mycenaeans chose Atreus as king. In the version found in Euripides and later writers, the quarrel with Thyestes centred on a golden lamb. Atreus had vowed to sacrifice the finest animal in his flock to Artemis, but hid the golden lamb instead. Thyestes, with the help of Atreus's wife Aerope, got hold of it and claimed the throne by agreeing that whoever owned the lamb should rule. Zeus then made the sun reverse its course as a sign in Atreus's favour. Thyestes later fathered Aegisthus on his own daughter Pelopia, because an oracle said this son would avenge him. Aegisthus went on to kill Atreus and later conspired with Clytemnestra against Agamemnon.

Mycenae or Argos?

Homer distinguishes Mycenae from Argos. In the Catalogue of Ships, Agamemnon leads a hundred ships from "well-founded Mycenae" and the cities nearby, while Diomedes leads the contingent from Argos and Tiryns. The tragedians, writing when Argos dominated the plain and Mycenae was a minor town, usually move Agamemnon's palace to Argos. Aeschylus's Oresteia is set there. Readers moving between the Iliad and the plays are often confused by this. When Greek tragedy says "Argos," it often means the kingdom Homer would call Mycenae.

Grave circles, tholos tombs, and the later town

Schliemann excavated Grave Circle A inside the walls. A second cemetery, Grave Circle B, was found outside them in 1951 and excavated by Ioannis Papadimitriou and George Mylonas. Both date to roughly the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries BC, centuries before any plausible Trojan War. The "Mask of Agamemnon" dates to around 1550–1500 BC. The Lion Gate and the great tholos tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus (also called the Tomb of Agamemnon) belong to the thirteenth century BC. The names attached to these monuments are modern or late antique guesses. Pausanias was shown graves of Atreus, Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedon the charioteer, and Electra, as well as those of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, which were placed outside the walls because they were thought unworthy to lie inside.

Mycenae did not disappear after the Bronze Age. Herodotus records eighty Mycenaeans fighting at Thermopylae in 480 BC, and Mycenae is named on the Serpent Column dedicated at Delphi after Plataea. That independence irritated Argos, which besieged and destroyed the town in the 460s BC. Linear B tablets have also been found at Mycenae itself, including in houses outside the citadel. They show the palace administration recording oil, spices and textiles.

Ancient sources

• Homer, Iliad 2.569–580 — the Catalogue of Ships: Agamemnon leads a hundred ships from Mycenae, the largest contingent at Troy.
• Homer, Iliad 19.95–133 — Hera's trick that makes Eurystheus, not Heracles, lord of the Argolid.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.15.4–2.16.7 — the origins of the city's name, the Lion Gate, the Perseia spring and the graves of the Atreidae.
• Aeschylus, Oresteia — Agamemnon's murder, Orestes' revenge and the end of the curse, set at Argos.
• Apollodorus, Epitome 2.10–16 — the golden lamb, the reversed sun, the feast of Thyestes and the birth of Aegisthus.
• Herodotus, Histories 7.202 — the eighty Mycenaeans at Thermopylae.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Mask of Agamemnon really Agamemnon's?

No. It comes from a shaft grave of around 1550–1500 BC, roughly three centuries before the traditional date of the Trojan War. Some scholars have even questioned parts of Schliemann's account of how it was found.

Who founded Mycenae in mythology?

Perseus, son of Zeus and Danaë, after he accidentally killed his grandfather Acrisius and exchanged Argos for Tiryns. The Cyclopes were said to have built the walls.

What is the difference between Mycenae and Mycenaean?

Mycenae is one city in the Argolid. "Mycenaean" is a modern label for the whole Late Bronze Age Greek civilisation, which also included palaces at Pylos, Thebes, Tiryns and elsewhere. It does not mean Mycenae ruled them all.

When was Mycenae destroyed?

The palace burned around 1200 BC, during the wider Bronze Age collapse. The town lived on in reduced form until Argos sacked it in the 460s BC.