Greek Mythology, page 24
Most of Classical and Roman Sparta lies on a low acropolis behind the modern sports stadium. It includes a Roman theatre and the Temple of Bronze-Housed Athene. By the banks of the Eurotas, near the bridge leading north from Sparti, are the still-atmospheric foundations of the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, complete with Roman seating.
Little remains at Amyclae, on the road south to Gytheion, but the site is romantic. To the west of Sparti, the Parori Gorge may be where Spartans exposed unwanted babies. Just to the north of this the Byzantine city of Mistra boasts beautifully frescoed churches and an impressive castle. In the summer this site, on a steep slope with little shade, can be arduous to visit.
Among the exhibits at Sparti’s Museum are an archaic relief of Helen and Menelaus from Amyclae; a fifth-century BC (weathered) marble torso of a warrior, believed to be Leonidas; a Roman mosaic of Alcibiades, the traitorous fifth-century BC Athenian politician; and masks and sickles from the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.
19
Mycenae & the Curse on Agamemnon’s Family
It never leaves this house, the chorus, chanting its cabbala in unison, cacophonous, words so diabolic – and they’ve drunk human blood. And so their power is growing and they’re haunting all the house now with their ghostly tarantella and they cannot be dislodged – they’re in the blood, congenital, the demons of revenge. They are roosting in the palace, chanting psalms of blinding madness, of the passion that began it, a polyphony of loathing for a brother’s wife debauched, detestation for the man who so seduced her.… Look! Do you see them, roosting, huddled close beside the house, the young dream-phantoms, arms outstretched, the children killed – no! can it be?! – by their own family, clutching in their hands their flesh, their guts, their entrails, sweetmeats in a feast for their own father!
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, II. 1186ff.
From the rise above the whitewashed chapel of the Panagia, the All-Holy Virgin, tranquil on a low ridge riddled with remains of royal tombs, Mycenae’s citadel appears to crouch, a brooding beast, between two glowering mountains. Around the low acropolis, its vertebrae of gleaming grey stones coil, clinging to the rock, whose steep cliff plunges to a chasm far below, known to the Greeks as Chaos. At times the gusting wind sweeps hard across the ruins, scouring the dry earth, and, just as suddenly, dies back – but not before a shroud of sand, an ochre cloud of dust, has lifted high into the air to drift and swell and finally subside, a spectral drizzle; and as it falls it coats once more the roofless halls, the winding lanes, the walls, the open graves.
And then the sun breaks through the scudding clouds. Quite unexpectedly the citadel is bathed in light. Yet still the feeling of foreboding lingers, a feeling rooted deeply in Mycenae’s past. For this was once not just a seat of glittering empire. Legends tell how Mycenae’s soil was soaked in blood as ruling families tore themselves apart, committing acts of ever-spiralling brutality.
The Foundation of Mycenae
The spilling of kindred blood flows back through Mycenae’s past to its foundation. When Perseus accidentally killed his grandfather King Acrisius of Argos, he was loath to claim the throne as was his due. Instead he exchanged kingdoms with Megapenthes, ruler of nearby Tiryns. Included in his new lands was the stony outcrop of Mycenae, at the head of a fertile plain flanked by tall hills south of the Dervenaki Pass. Seeing its strategic potential, Perseus enlisted Cyclopes to build its massive walls (or so locals, marvelling at the enormous stones, told Pausanias).
But Perseus and Megapenthes quarrelled, and Perseus was killed. His death heralded a period of instability. Mycenae was attacked, its cattle stolen, and only through guile could Perseus’ grandson, Amphitryon, defeat the raiders, islanders from far-off Taphos in the Ionian Sea. Still disaster dogged the royal household. When Amphitryon accidentally killed Mycenae’s king, his uncle, he was exiled to Thebes with his wife Alcmene.
The new king Sthenelus restored stability, marrying the daughter of Pelops, king of Elis, but their son Eurystheus once more plunged the region into chaos. Ruling from Tiryns, Eurystheus declared war on the family of his hated and now dead enemy Heracles, and when they fled to Athens he followed with his army. But Eurystheus was killed, and, his throne now vacant, the Mycenaeans sent for Atreus and Thyestes, who were Eurystheus’ uncles, Pelops’ sons, and already ruling as regents in nearby Midea.
Atreus, Thyestes & a Bloody Banquet
The brothers were bitter rivals. When the elder, Atreus, was appointed king, Thyestes seduced his wife, Aerope, and plotted revolution. After Atreus vowed to dedicate his finest animal to Artemis, his shepherds discovered a miraculous horned lamb, resplendent with a golden fleece, clearly a gift from the gods. Sacrificing it as pledged, Atreus kept the fleece for himself. But his announcement that its ownership proved his right to rule backfired when Aerope stole the fleece and gave it to Thyestes, who triumphantly seized the kingdom.
Zeus, displeased, advised Atreus to challenge Thyestes: if the sun reversed its course, would Thyestes give up the throne? Thyestes agreed, and as Euripides relates: ‘Zeus turned back the searing circuit of the stars and of the blazing sun, and dawn’s white face … so, while rain-clouds brooded to the north, the scorching shrine of Ammon, denied Zeus’ drenching rain, withered in parching heat.’ As Thyestes fled into exile, Atreus’ revenge was swift. Far out to sea, he threw Aerope overboard, and calmly watched her drown. His vengeance on Thyestes took longer. After many years he tracked down his brother, assured him of his forgiveness, and invited him and his young sons to a feast of reconciliation. Thyestes was ushered into the banqueting hall and enthusiastically devoured the meal, commending Atreus’ chefs. But when new platters were brought in, their covers were removed to reveal, neatly arranged, Thyestes’ children’s severed heads and hands and feet. Retching, Thyestes cursed Atreus and his family, and rushed from the room.
Thyestes’ Revenge
Thyestes came to Sicyon, near Corinth, to find his one surviving child, his daughter Pelopia, who was priestess of Athene. His motive was eccentric – an oracle had urged him to father a child by her. So he raped her while she was bathing and ran off, dropping his sword. Soon after, Atreus arrived. When he saw Pelopia he fell in love with her, and took her as his wife back to Mycenae, where she bore a son. But recalling the circumstances of his conception, Pelopia exposed the baby on the hillside. Atreus found out and dispatched a search party. Finding him being suckled by a goat, they named the baby Aegisthus (‘goat strength’) and returned him to Mycenae, where Atreus reared him as his own.
Then the harvests failed. For years famine stalked Mycenae. At last an oracle told Atreus what he must do: recall Thyestes. Reluctantly Atreus obeyed, but, when Thyestes arrived, Atreus immediately imprisoned him. Determined to resolve the situation once and for all, Atreus summoned Aegisthus and ordered him to prove his worth by killing Thyestes. So the boy took a sword from Pelopia and entered the prison. He was about to strike when Thyestes recognized the weapon as his own, lost years before at Sicyon, and revealed that he, Thyestes, was Aegisthus’ father. Together they killed Atreus.
With Thyestes now ruling Mycenae, Atreus’ sons Agamemnon and Menelaus plotted his downfall. Supported by Tyndareus, king of Sparta, they marched on Mycenae and forced Thyestes and Aegisthus into exile. For a while all went well, and ties with Sparta were strengthened when Tyndareus selected Menelaus to marry his daughter, Helen, and inherit his throne. As for Tyndareus’ other daughter, Clytemnestra: Agamemnon invaded Pisa, where her husband, Tantalus, was king, killed him, and, after a rough wooing, married her.
Agamemnon, Clytemnestra & Aegisthus
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had four children: a son, Orestes, and three daughters, Iphigenia (sometimes called Iphianassa), Electra and Chrysothemis. Mycenae flourished, becoming the most powerful city in all Greece. But once again the shedding of family blood brought disaster.
In fulfilment of an oath, war was declared when Paris took Helen to Troy. As Menelaus’ elder brother and the most powerful of all kings, Agamemnon was appointed to lead the expedition to retrieve her, so he ordered the Greek army to assemble at the Bay of Aulis, opposite Euboea in the east of Greece. While there, Agamemnon asked his prophet Calchas to foretell how long the war would last. At once, an eagle swooped from the sky and seized in its talons a pregnant hare, which it ripped apart, revealing ten unborn and bloody leverets. The omen was clear. The war would last ten years. But the pregnant hare was sacred to Artemis, and her anger knew no bounds. She caused storm winds to scream down from Thrace, so that the soldiers, huddled by the lashing sea and enduring first rains, then starvation, grew increasingly resentful.
Calchas’ advice was chilling. Artemis would relent only if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. So, pretending he was giving her in marriage to Achilles, he summoned her to Aulis. Approaching the altar, her joy turned to terror when Agamemnon’s guards snatched her and raised her high. Aeschylus describes the scene:
Oh, how she begged and prayed and called out for her father. They did not care, though, in their lust for war, the generals. They did not care for all her youth and innocence. Agamemnon made the necessary prayer and told his men to hold her firm above the altar, like an animal, face-down, wrapped closely in her robes. He told them too to gag her mouth, her lovely mouth, to muffle any words that might bring down a curse upon the house by violence and the choking voiceless cord. Her yellow robes, dyed deep in purest saffron, fell heavy to the ground, and she looked at each man at the sacrifice, darting looks to melt the heart, lovely as a girl looks in a picture, wanting so to speak – as often in her father’s halls she’d sung at banquet, her virgin voice pure, lovely, honouring in love and gentleness the third drink offering to god, the sacred hymn, the hymn of hope for her dear father.
As the winds dropped and the soldiers raced to their ships, Iphigenia’s mother Clytemnestra was left alone to watch her daughter’s blood drying in the warming breeze.
Others attribute Artemis’ anger to Agamemnon’s inadvertent killing of a sacred deer, adding that at the moment of sacrifice Artemis relented and substituted a deer for Iphigenia, whom she transported to Tauris in the Crimea. Later, Iphigenia was returned to Greece by her brother Orestes, becoming the priestess of Artemis at Brauron, near Athens, where her hero-shrine can still be seen. Left in Mycenae alone with her resentment, Clytemnestra turned for support to Agamemnon’s enemy: Aegisthus.
At the very moment of her sacrifice, a deer is substituted for Iphigenia. (Mixing vessel from Apulia, Italy, c. 370–350 BC.)
The Assassination of Agamemnon
To warn her of Agamemnon’s homecoming when war was over, Clytemnestra arranged a chain of beacons from Mount Ida near Troy, across to Samothrace and Mount Athos, and down the east coast to Mycenae, where a sentry kept watch on the palace roof. At last the message came. Soon Agamemnon was driving triumphantly into the palace courtyard, where Clytemnestra met him. Feigning happiness, she begged Agamemnon to celebrate his victory by walking into the palace not on bare earth but over costly woven tapestries. Agamemnon hesitated, fearing this would provoke divine retribution. Then he agreed.
Inside, Clytemnestra prepared Agamemnon a hot soothing bath. But no sooner was he in it than she (perhaps aided by Aegisthus) threw a net across him, stabbing the struggling king repeatedly with a sword – or (some say) hacking at him with an axe. Bellowing like a sacrificial bull, Agamemnon fell dying in the blood-fouled bath. He had brought home with him a Trojan concubine: Cassandra, the prophetess daughter of King Priam. She sensed Mycenae’s horrors past, present and future, and realizing that her death, too, was near, she was killed beside Agamemnon’s corpse, her body flung into the gorge of Chaos. Agamemnon’s daughter Electra hurriedly gave her young brother Orestes to a trusted slave and bundled them out of Mycenae’s northern gate with instructions to escape to Phocis, where Strophius (husband of Agamemnon’s sister Anaxibia) was king. Here Orestes grew to manhood.
The Return of Orestes
Later, in disguise, Orestes returned to Mycenae with his cousin Pylades. At Agamemnon’s tomb, he was disturbed by a procession of women, come to make offerings to his father’s ghost. Orestes recognized their leader: Electra. Clytemnestra had sent her, having dreamt that she gave birth to a serpent that sank its fangs deep in her breast. Discovering that Electra also hated their mother, Orestes revealed his identity to his sister and the two plotted their revenge.
Aeschylus tells how, driven to matricide by the god Apollo, Orestes tricked Clytemnestra into summoning Aegisthus, whom he butchered before turning his sword on his mother. Recognizing Orestes at last, she bared her breast, demanding how he could kill the woman who once suckled him. It was to no avail. Sophocles has another version. His Orestes brings false news of his own death in a chariot race and gains access to the palace by giving Clytemnestra an urn containing (he claims) her son’s ashes. He then kills his mother before leading Aegisthus ominously into the palace.
The most radical retelling of the myth comes from Euripides. Here, Electra is married to a peasant, and a reluctant Orestes reveals his identity only after being recognized by an old retainer, who cajoles him into vengeance. Impiously he slaughters Aegisthus at a sacrifice. A messenger describes the scene to Electra:
Aegisthus took the entrails and gazed at them, easing them apart with his fingers. And as he bent down low to look, your brother, rising tall up on his toes, crashed the cleaver heavy on his spine, smashing his back bones from their sockets. Aegisthus’ body writhed in spasms, juddering, twitching, and death came hard.
Together Electra and Orestes stab Clytemnestra, whom they have first lured to the house by pretending that Electra has given birth to a baby girl. Electra and Orestes fascinated Euripides. In his tragedy Orestes, set just days after the matricide, he portrays the young man as a psychopath, who kidnaps Menelaus’ daughter Hermione before then trying to murder Helen.
Orestes’ Acquittal
With no family member left alive to take vengeance on Orestes, the gods sent the Erinyes (Furies) to pursue him. Crazed with terror, Orestes fled to Delphi, then to Athens, where Athene established the first law court. The Furies insisted that matricide must be punished, Apollo that it was Orestes’ duty to avenge his father. Athene used her casting vote to acquit Orestes, insisting that fathers take precedence over mothers, as her own birth from Zeus’ head showed.
Some tell how Orestes then travelled with Pylades to Tauris, where his sister Iphigenia rescued him from being sacrificed, and together they escaped to Greece. There Orestes fell in love with his cousin Hermione. That she was married to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus was an inconvenient detail. Orestes arranged for the murder of his rival in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi before regaining Mycenae and conquering much of the Peloponnese, which he ruled from Sparta. He was buried in nearby Tegea, where sixth-century BC Spartans found his bones. Meanwhile Mycenae passed from mythology.
Mycenae in History & Today
Inhabited from the fourth millennium BC, Mycenae attained increasing importance and wealth in the second millennium. Funerary goods discovered in Grave Circle A, a royal cemetery later incorporated within the circuit of the citadel’s walls include solid gold death masks, jewelry, cups and banqueting paraphernalia, as well as inlaid daggers, whose blades are decorated with scenes of aristocratic pursuits including lion hunts. On stone stelai (grave markers), men with spears are shown hunting from chariots.
Around 1500 BC tholos tombs were constructed in the neighbouring hills. These were outstanding feats of engineering: high corbelled chambers with dressed and fitted stone, approached by long dromoi (processional avenues). Around 1250 BC Mycenae’s citadel walls were rebuilt with massive blocks (some estimated to weigh up to 100 tons), while the palace was enlarged and enhanced. A monumental gateway was constructed and on a triangular slab above the lintel were carved two lionesses (or perhaps wingless griffins) flanking a single pillar, their forepaws resting on an altar. Possibly the earliest coat of arms in Europe, its power is palpable, despite the fact that the creatures’ heads have not survived (they may have been originally of gold).
The main gate at Mycenae, built around 1250 BC, is surmounted by two (now headless) lionesses or griffins flanking a column, perhaps the oldest coat of arms in Europe.
Bronze Age Mycenae traded widely throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, with ties to Egypt and the Hittite Empire. Linear B tablets testify to a tightly bureaucratic society. Mythology may reflect reality in suggesting that Mycenae was the most important of all Greek settlements for much of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC, eclipsing the power of Knossos and taking over the Cretan empire in a period which many historians call the Mycenaean Age.
In the twelfth century BC Mycenae’s power collapsed, and around 1200 BC the citadel and palace were destroyed by fire. It never recovered. A population of around 30,000 people (including those who lived in the town beneath the citadel) dwindled to almost nothing. Attempts at resettlement were only partially successful. Eighty Mycenaeans joined the Greek army fighting the Persian invasions (480–479 BC), but in 468 BC Mycenae was destroyed by neighbouring Argos. It was again inhabited in the third century BC, when a theatre was built over one of the now-forgotten tholos tombs, but again fell into such disrepair that Pausanias saw only ruins:
