Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
MYCENAEAN MURDERS
According to legend, the city of Mycenae was founded by Perseus, the slayer of Medusa the
Gorgon, before it fell into the bloodied hands of the House of Atreus.
Atreus
, in an act of
vengeance for his wife's seduction by his brother Thyestes, murdered Thyestes' sons, and fed
them to their father. Not surprisingly, this incurred the wrath of the gods: Thyestes' daughter,
Pelopia, subsequently bore her father a son, Aegisthus, who later murdered Atreus and
restored Thyestes to the throne.
The next generation saw the gods' curse fall upon Atreus' son
Agamemnon
. On his return
to Mycenae after commanding the Greek forces in the Trojan War - a role in which he had
earlier consented to the sacrifice of his own daughter, Iphigeneia - he was killed in his bath by
his wife Klytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, who had also killed his father. The tragic cycle
was completed by Agamemnon's son, Orestes, who, egged on by his sister Elektra, took
revenge by murdering his mother, Klytemnestra, and was pursued by the Furies until Athena
finally lifted the curse on the dynasty.
2
he
archeological remains
of Mycenae fit remarkably easily with the tales (see box
above), at least if it is taken as a poetic rendering of dynastic struggles, or, as most
scholars now believe it to be, a merging of stories from various periods. The buildings
unearthed by Schliemann show signs of occupation from around 1950 BC, as well as
two periods of intense disruption, around 1200 BC and again in 1100 BC - at which
stage the town, though still prosperous, was
abandoned
.
No coherent explanation has been put forward for these events, but it seems that war
among the rival kingdoms was a major factor in the Mycenaean decline. These struggles
appear to have escalated as the civilization developed in the thirteenth century BC:
excavations at Troy revealed the sacking of that city, quite possibly by forces led by a
king from Mycenae, in 1240 BC. The Mycenae citadel seems to have been replanned,
and heavily
fortified,
, during this period.
The Citadel
Daily: summer 8am-8pm; winter 8.30am-3pm • €8
he
Citadel of Mycenae
is entered through the famous
Lion Gate
, whose huge sloping
gateposts bolster walls dubbed “
Cyclopean
” by later Greeks, in bewildered attribution
to the only beings deemed capable of their construction. Above them a graceful carved
relief stands out in confident assertion: Mycenae at its height led a confederation of
Argolid towns (Tiryns, Árgos, Assine, Hermione - present-day Ermióni), dominated
the Peloponnese and exerted influence throughout the Aegean. The motif of a pillar
supported by two muscular lions was probably the symbol of the Mycenaean royal
house, for a seal found on the site bears a similar device.
Royal graves
Inside the walls to the right is
Grave Circle A
, the royal cemetery excavated by
Schliemann, who believed it contained the bodies of Agamemnon and his followers,
murdered on their triumphant return from Troy. Opening one of the graves, he found
a tightly fitting and magnificent
gold mask
that had somehow preserved the flesh of a
Mycenaean noble; “I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon,” he exclaimed in an
excited cable to the king of Greece. For a time it seemed that this provided irrefutable
evidence of the truth of Homer's tale. In fact, the burials date from about three
centuries before the Trojan War, though given Homer's possible combining of several
earlier sagas, there's no reason why they should not have been connected with a
Mycenaean king Agamemnon. They were certainly royal graves, for the finds (now in
the National Archeological Museum in Athens) are among the richest that archeology
has yet unearthed.
