Mycenae is the kind of place that makes you quieter when you arrive. It stands on a rocky hill in the Argolid, in the north-east of the Peloponnese, between two higher mountains, with huge grey walls and a gateway topped by two stone lions. Homer calls it golden Mycenae, rich in gold, and the name is earned. It was the centre of a powerful Bronze Age kingdom whose culture we now call Mycenaean.
The Greeks of later centuries looked at its walls and could not believe human beings had built them. The stones were so large that they said the Cyclopes had put them in place, and the name Cyclopean masonry is still used for this style.
How the city started
According to the tradition recorded by the traveller Pausanias, the city was founded by Perseus. After killing Medusa and rescuing Andromeda, he returned to Argos and, by accident, killed his grandfather Acrisius with a thrown discus, which fulfilled an old prophecy. Ashamed to take the throne in those circumstances, he traded kingdoms with a relative and went to rule a new place.
He named it Mycenae after the cap, or in some tellings the chape, of his sword scabbard, which came loose as he travelled. Mykes is the Greek word for a mushroom or a cap, and he took it as a sign. It is a funny origin for a great fortress, a small bit of a sword that fell off.
The king who gave orders to Heracles
Eurystheus, the ruler who set Heracles his twelve labours, was king here, and the hero came back to Mycenae after each one to show the result. The story goes that Eurystheus was so frightened by the monsters Heracles brought that he hid in a large bronze jar, and spoke to the hero only through a herald. If you ever need a picture of a ruler who is in charge on paper and terrified in practice, this is it. The Library's piece on the labours covers the full list.
The family curse
Mycenae's best-known story is not about a hero. It is about a household. The founder of the line was Tantalus, who was punished in the Underworld, and his son Pelops became king in the Peloponnese. Pelops' sons, Atreus and Thyestes, were rivals for the throne, and their feud is the sort of thing that cannot be told in a cheerful tone.
A golden lamb appeared in Atreus' flock, a sign of kingship. Thyestes stole it with the help of Atreus' wife Aerope, whom he had seduced. Zeus intervened, with Atreus winning a challenge in which the sun was made to run backwards. Atreus, in revenge, invited his brother to a feast and served him his own sons in the meal. The traditions say that the sun turned away from the sight.
The curse that followed pursued the family through the next generation. I would not call it a punishment for one crime. It is more like an inheritance. Each person in the story does what seems reasonable, given what was done to them, and the damage passes along.
Agamemnon
Atreus' son Agamemnon became king of Mycenae, married Clytemnestra, and led the Greek army to Troy. To get the fleet moving, he gave up his own daughter Iphigenia, in the version most often told. Clytemnestra never forgave it. During the ten years he was away, she took a lover, Aegisthus, who was the surviving son of Thyestes and had his own score to settle.
When Agamemnon returned home in triumph, bringing the Trojan prophetess Cassandra with him, he was killed in his bath. In the tragedian Aeschylus, Clytemnestra throws a net or a robe over him and strikes him down. Cassandra, who has already seen it coming, goes in to die as well.
The son who came back
Orestes, the son, was smuggled away as a boy. Years later he returned with his friend Pylades, met his sister Electra at their father's tomb, and killed both his mother and Aegisthus, because Apollo ordered him to. The Furies, ancient goddesses who punish those who shed family blood, began to pursue him.
The cycle ends at Athens. In Aeschylus' Eumenides, Athena sets up a court on the Areopagus hill, with Apollo defending Orestes and the Furies prosecuting. The vote is tied, Athena casts the deciding vote for acquittal, and the Furies are persuaded to become protective spirits of the city. What had been a chain of revenge turns into a trial. If you want a single example of Greek myth explaining where a legal system comes from, this is it.
What the diggers found
Heinrich Schliemann started excavating at Mycenae in 1876 and found a circle of royal shaft graves filled with gold, including masks, cups, jewelry and weapons. He is said to have sent a telegram announcing that he had gazed on the face of Agamemnon. The mask he had in mind is real and spectacular, but it dates to around the sixteenth century BC, several centuries before any likely date for a Trojan war. It cannot be the king of the poems.
Nearby is a great beehive tomb called the Treasury of Atreus, which was named in the same hopeful spirit, though nobody knows whose tomb it really was. The Lion Gate remains one of the oldest monumental sculptures in Europe. Clay tablets in the script called Linear B prove that these palace people spoke an early form of Greek.
Around 1200 BC, Mycenae and the other palace centres declined and were burned or abandoned. Why is still debated. Earthquakes, famine, invasions and internal conflict have all been proposed, and probably several of them mattered.
The pattern
Here is the part I find most striking. The real Mycenae went down in fire and silence. The mythical Mycenae is a story about a family doing the same to itself. Whether the later Greeks knew it or not, they filled the ruins with a tale about a house that could not stop destroying itself, and it matched what they saw.