The Archaeological Site of Mycenae
Part 1: Arrival
On Tuesday morning, for the first time during our trip to Greece, it was raining heavily outside the window, but by the time we got up the rain was subsiding. It wasn't late, but it was certainly a lie-in compared to the many sunrises Etienne and I had watched so far in Greece. There was no rush as we were planning on taking a bus from Isthmus (Ισθμός) at 8:55am, not far from Corinth. The bus eventually came, late, and we headed on a 45-minute journey south into the Peloponnese, playing chess against each-other on Etienne's phone to pass the time.
Sometime before midday we disembarked not far before reaching Argos (Άργος), at a quaint village known as Fichti (Φίχτι), where it luckily wasn't raining. This lies at the upper end of a large agricultural basin fed by various rivers heading down into the Argolic Gulf. In particular, the land beneath Fichti was filled with vast orange plantations, brimming with the large fruits, transitioning to olive plantations higher up the sides of the valley. In general, this area was much lusher than what we had experienced around Athens, with barren rocky ground, low shrubs, and pines being replaced by grasses and fruit trees.
Fichti, or 'Fichtia' lies on some ancient sites from the Bronze Age, including the remains of four fortified towers. In slightly more recent history, the small church of Panagia tou Zacharias here is where the Greek General Theodoros Kolokotronis made his headquarters before the Battle of Dervenakia in 1822, a great success in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottomans. Even more recently, the first Fichti Art Festival was held in the village in the summer of 2021.
Despite all of this stuff, Etienne and I headed eastward immediately, across to the opposite side of the valley where we could see, in the distance, a site that would turn out to be the pinnacle of our whole trip to Greece (photo 1).
Part 2: Context
First, some historical, mythological, and cultural context:
Up until now, Etienne and myself had explored some ancient sites around Athens, Sounion, and Corinth. These areas contain some truly remarkable structures, dating from as far back as around 2,500 years ago. It's hard to put into words just how crazily old that is. Most human things back home in the UK are less than 1,000 years old, or have very little remaining beyond excavated floor plans and standing stones. Meanwhile, these structures predate famous historical events such as the Roman Empire and the New Testament. They're so old that they're literally mythological, having various gods and heroes from stories that have been told for millennia being based at these locations. However, at each place we've been there have also been references to a time before. The seemingly unfathomably ancient temples and other structures being built on a pre-existing human site from an era that was once forgotten to history.
To get into this, I'm going to start with a bit of scene-setting for what we've found out about this Ancient Greece to the Ancient Greeks. It seem sometime around 2,000BC (that's 4,000 years ago!), an Indo-European group of people headed westward coming from somewhere via what is modern day Turkey and interacted with the local population of the Balkans who had been there since the Stone Age. The merging of these people, whether or not it was peaceful, seems to have led to a society and language that you could imagine might one day evolve into the people and culture of Ancient Greece. Heading further south into Greece, these people were also greatly influenced by the mysterious Minoans, a civilisation from the Greek islands, centred on the island of Crete. It's not exactly clear what was up with the Minoans, but their whole society basically collapsed at some point around the 1,400sBC, possibly due to conflict with these new people on the mainland, or possibly something else entirely, such as the huge eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (now Santorini), one of the largest natural disasters in European history. That basically leaves us with the Indo-European-Balkan people I mentioned earlier being the new main thing throughout what is largely modern day Greece.
This is the Late Bronze Age of Ancient Greece, which spans from 1,750 to 1,050BC. Influenced by the Minoans, and other Mediterranean cultures at the time, such as the Egyptians and the Hittites; the people of mainland Greece thrived and built a variety of heavily fortified settlements. It seems their society, now known as the Mycenaeans (you could also call them Achaeans although that term is a bit more specific), was very militant, and inhabited Greece in a series of separate kingdoms ruled by very wealthy kings and divided by Greece's mountainous geography. To me, what's interesting about the Mycenaeans and their culture and stories, is how it was passed on to the modern day.
Many of us will have grown up with Ancient Greek myths, whether that's through Disney's Hercules movie, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, or from a variety of other modern pop-culture sources. These famous stories are based on those first written down in ancient Greece, such as the famous Iliad written around 800BC. In our minds today, we imagine the myths and legends as being set at around that time, in the Archaic Period of Greek history 800-490BC, or even more recently up to the end of the Roman age in Greece in 324AD, but that's just when the stories were written. Hesiod's Theogony was written as an attempt to synthesise a variety of stories that he came across, a snapshot of pre-existing Greek mythology as it was around 600BC, and Homer, who is credited for the Iliad and other Homeric Hymns, was famously a blind wandering bard who told stories from oral traditions that were written down by other people. From this, it is clear that these stories come from long before when they were written, based in oral traditions passed through generations.
So here's how things seem to have gone down:
between around 1,600 and 1,100BC, the Mycenaeans inhabited and rose to power in Greece. They formed a warrior society of small separate kingdoms that often fought each other, ruled by incredibly rich kings who were much revered and buried with vast quantities of wealth.
Despite their infighting, the Mycenaeans' power and influence grew, possibly leading to the fall of the Minoans, and possibly also organised attacks on other nearby civilisations. They wrote in Linear B script, a form of writing ancestral to Ancient Greek.
Then they just sort of stopped. As did most stuff going on in the eastern Mediterranean, and even much of the known world at the time. This was known as the Bronze Age Collapse and it isn't entirely clear what caused it. There are many theories.
The Bronze Age Collapse led directly into what is known as the Greek Dark Ages, when much of organised power and civilisation had disappeared, along with education and writing. Stories and legends from the old Mycenaean days were passed on orally, evolving and becoming exaggerated and simplified into myth and legend. These myths are what emerged on the other side in some of the Ancient Greek mythology we all know and love. Many of the stories even clearly reference or describe now-known Mycenaean archaeological sites and historical events.
Part 3: back to our adventure
In case it wasn't clear from the previous rambling, Etienne and I were heading away from Fichti to get to an important ancient Mycenaean site. In fact it is the most famous Mycenaean place of all: Mycenae itself.
In the distance we could see the stone walls bordering the acropolis of this ancient settlement which we were headed to.
On the way there, we started by following the road, and crossed part of the old railway here, which unfortunately met its end as a functioning rail line due to the economic crisis in Greece roughly around 2010. Interestingly it is thought that Fichti might actually be named because of this line, arising from the voice of the tax collector shouting 'arrive' in Greek (either φθάνω or αφικνούμαι I think). We continued a bit further, but rather than heading through the village of Mykines and following directly up to the Archaeological Site of Mycenae, we instead turned north up a farm track to visit some incredible outer parts of Mycenae's remains, which I'll describe when we get there.
3.1: getting distracted by flowers
For now, we were headed northward along a gravel track, surrounded by low orange trees. We navigated through a few of these interconnected tracks in an attempt to start moving further east and eventually started following one track higher up the side of the valley, following an old dried riverbed as the scenery changed from orange to olive plantation (there was a sign that we struggled to translate but seemed vaguely like a keep out sign, which we obviously ignored). The gravelly margins between the track and the farmland were filled with various plant species, including a few very early-flowering spring bulbs. I forgot to photograph the few dark grape hyacinths (Muscari commutatum) that I came across, but I definitely held us up quite a bit trying to get a decent photograph of another little plant with gorgeous pale blue flowers - Bellevalia hyacinthoides (photo 2), another spring bulb in the hyacinth subfamily Scilloideae and one that is endemic to Greece. B. hyacinthoides is a low-growing species, with waxy, succulent grass-like leaves extending outward flat against the rocky ground, and an inflorescence (flower spike) held just a few centimetres high. I was really happy to find this little flower, even though I didn't know what it was at the time, as it created such amazing little splashes of pale blue along our way, although it was a funny shape and size to get a nice photo of.
I came across another flower a little further along the track, this time one that seemed pretty clear to me to be in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. I was right, but failed to notice at the time that this is actually a species I'd already seen and identified this trip, back on Pnyx Hill in Athens. These red flower buds are from poppy anemones (Anemone coronaria) (photo 3), which were all a pale lilac-white in Athens. Poppy anemone naturally comes in a variety of colours in the wild, something which is normally found in garden cultivars of plants that are selectively bred for different colours. All the ones I found in Athens were nearly white, while the few I found near Mycenae were red, which is a much better excuse to tell an interesting origin myth for the species:
In Greek mythology there is a man named Adonis whose myth has many similar tellings, including this one:
The goddess Aphrodite found him abandoned as a baby and took him to the underworld to be fostered by Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. Upon returning for him once he was grown, Aphrodite found that he was strikingly handsome, and both she and Persephone fell in love with him and fought over him (don't tell Hades or Hephaestus). Zeus himself settled the dispute, in the typical Zeus fashion of treating other people like objects, and decreed that Adonis would spend one third of the year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chooses. Adonis loved Aphrodite and so chose her, spending two thirds of every year with her.
Then, one day, while Adonis was out hunting, he was wounded by a powerful boar sent by Ares, the god of war who is often also characterised as one of Aphrodite's main lovers, in jealous rage of Adonis' relationship with Aphrodite. Adonis bled to death in Aphrodite's arms, and where his blood fell, she caused anemones to grow, stained red by the blood.
This is an etiological myth explaining Aphrodite's association with poppy anemonies, but the poppy anemone's association with Adonis' character may go back even further. While in Ancient Greek, this is the story between a goddess and a mortal man, you may notice Adonis' name is suspiciously similar to Adonai, a word I've come across in RE at school as it is a title used to refer to God in the Hebrew Bible. In fact it is thought to derive from the Canaanite word ʼadōn, meaning 'lord'. In fact, the story of Aphrodite and Adonis is probably a Greek continuation of the Sumerian gods Inanna and Dumuzid from ancient Mesopotamia (you know, one of the oldest civilisations in the world). This is further supported as, not only was this god couple from ancient Mesopotamia passed on to Greece's myths, but the Sumerian myths also transmitted to the Babylonians, who transcribed Dumuzid's name into Tammuz, and who the Phoenician's called Nea'man. Lo and behold, the modern Arabic word for poppy anemone is shaqa'iq An-Nu'man - 'the wounds of Nu'man'. So yeah, the divine associations of this flower species have been passed down through entire cultures from millennia.
Part 4: the beehive tombs
After getting thoroughly distracted by flowers, I led Etienne off the track just a little to visit the first of the Tholos of Mycenae (photo 4), of which we planned to visit them all.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Now, I have to contextualise what the tholos are:
'Tholos' derives from the Ancient Greek 'θόλος', meaning 'dome'. It can refer to a variety of things, in this case the Bronze Age Tholos Tombs. These tombs are constructed with circular bases and walls of successively smaller rings of stones getting higher, forming a curved roof that doesn't curve enough to form a hemisphere, so is what is known as a false dome (a dome built from purely horizontal layers). Such a shape resembles a beehive, hence these tombs are also known as beehive tombs. These may be inspired by the tholoi of Crete originating in the early Minoan period, or were perhaps an evolution of the Middle Bronze Age tumuli, of which there are vaguely comparable structures all over the place, even back at my home village of Hurst Green in the UK, with Winckley Lowes II. The Mycenaean Tholoi are far more grandiose than the tiny mounds that form the Bronze Age burial sites I've seen before this though.
Tholoi first appear before 1,500BC, but only become widespread in the Mycenaean lands shortly after this time. They were cut into the slope of a hillside such that only the upper third of the vault lay above ground level, and was then covered with a small mound of earth. These huge burial chambers would have been reserved for only the wealthiest and most important people in Mycenaean kingdoms, likely being royal commissions from the monarchy of a given region. They were usually tombs for multiple people, likely family members, who were buried with masses of wealth, including gold, silver, and many weapons (they were a military society after all), though most of this was pillaged long ago. Leading to these tombs are entrance corridors carved into the slope, known as dromos, which end with a doorway known as a stomion leading into the tholos chamber.
At Mycenae there are nine known tholoi, the greatest number that has been found at any single site. They were all constructed at different times between about 1,500BC and 1,250BC, spanning multiple generations. Each of the nine are named arbitrarily based on location, things that were found in them, architectural features, or after members of the mythical ruling house of Mycenae, since we don't know for certain who was buried at each one (if anyone, since some may have been built not long before Mycenae was abandoned and were never used). Based on their use of raw materials, how the stone is cut (or not cut), and other decorative and engineering features put into the tholoi at Mycenae, they can be divided into 3 distinct groups, with a 4th one also having been proposed (these are not based on size), generally assumed to follow chronological order of what time they were built (Group I older than Group III). More info can be found here
The first beehive tomb we came across was a sturdy-looking one from Group II, though most of the roof is now gone. The entrance was blocked off by a series of metal gates in the dromos, more like it was once used to keep livestock than as a blockade for humans. The location of this tomb was spectacular, with its stomion entrance looking over the valley towards Fichti and the Peloponnese mountains in the distance. This one is called the Kato Phournos Tomb, named after its location in comparison to Epano Phournos Tomb, with Epano meaning 'upper' and Kato being 'below/beneath', while Phournos comes from the same root we get the modern English 'furnace' from, although I'm not sure what about the landscape it is describing here.
The second tomb we came across was Τάφος των Δαιμόνων (photo 5-11), which translates to 'Tomb of Demons', although it also seems to be called Tomb of the Genii for some reason. Genii were a sort of divine nature or presence in a place or person, similar to a guardian spirit, from Roman times. It has also been known as Perfect Tholos. Either way, approaching and entering this tomb was incredible, one of the coolest things I've done. It's hidden away from the path, shrouded by olive trees and long grass, so you don't truly see what you've found until you're right there at the dromos, standing at a monument of times long passed. This is a Group III tomb, and is also largely intact and unobstructed. We walked straight into the Tholos and found ourselves in the open beehive-shaped room, with openings in the floor at the sides where there were once burials. The inside was echoey, shaded, and cool, and walking back out and down the dromos into the sunlight was just an incredible feeling. It was so cool.
Not far from the Tomb of the Genii is Cyclopean Tomb (photo 12), a Group I tomb of uncut stone. This tomb is largely destroyed, but we went in anyway via its collapsed wall, and found a variety of bryophytes growing among the rubble. On upper part of the tholos were more common lithophytic (growing on stone) mosses such as wall screw-moss (Tortula muralis), but some unusual liverworts could be found on the lower banks of the collapsed wall. There was a patch of orbus-seed liverwort (Targionia hypophylla) (photo 13), with its creeping leathery thalli clinging to the rock, the recognisable purple-black margins visible to suggest the species. Orbus-seed liverwort favours sites like this, on rock or thin soils that are seasonally very dry, as they can survive periods of drought by rolling their thalli up for protection, revealing their dark undersides and forming black worm-like tubes. A much smaller liverwort that I found growing, along with Fissidens, Poticeae, and Bryceae mosses between orbus-seed liverwort thalli, was a Fossombronia species (photo 14). This genus of liverworts are also known as frillworts and are recognised from their usually bright lime-green colour and being curled or crisped, in a frilly shape, also described as a lettuce-like appearance. Unfortunately, frillworts are hard to identified to species level without examining ripe spores microscopically, so a genus-level identification is all I can do.
Following on from Cyclopean Tomb we found the Epano Phournos Tomb (photo 15), another Group I tomb of uncut stone, whose stomion reminded me of Bronze Age henges in the UK, followed by the Group II Panagia Tholos (photo 16). Both were in a somewhat destroyed state, missing their beehive ceilings, and there was also a heavy rain shower while we were exploring around them.
4.1: distracted by views and more wildlife
After this first five tombs, we came up onto a path besides a small chapel (photo 17) where we had lunch and found a particularly handsome snail (photo 18), even if it was just a normal garden snail (Cornu aspersum) emerging to enjoy the first day with rain in ages. I currently haven't found any information about this lone church, although I'll update this page when I do. Currently all I've got is that the ridge it lies on is named Panagia, an Eastern Christian title for the Virgin Mary.
From here, on top of the small Panagia ridge that partially shelters Mycenae, there were incredible views all around, as we found out while continuing along the path south (photo 19). To the west is a vista over the grassy olive groves down to the orange plantations and Fichti and the mountains of the central Peloponnese (photo 20 and 21). To the south, a view over the vast Argolic Basin down to the Argolic Gulf, a part of the Aegean Sea (photo 22). On the right, the ancient city of Argos can be seen with the mountains around Astros behind it, and on the left is the smoke from a fire somewhere around Naflpio being blown eastward across the valley. Also notice the gorgeous pointy stands of Mediterranean cypress trees (Cupressus sempervirens) dotted around the olive and orange groves. Looking northeast from here we could also get a better view of the Acropolis of Mycenae, standing on a rocky outcrop between two drainage basins below a mountain on whose summit the Church of the Prophet Elias can just be made out (photo 23).
We dropped down the western slopes of Panagia Ridge to a label on the map Μυκηναϊκό Νεκροταφείο (photo 24), which translates to Mycenaean Cemetery. We weren't really sure what to find here, but it turned out to be a few dugout areas in the ground, seemingly imitating the shape of tholos tombs with a rounded area dug into the ground and a dromos-like trench leading up to it. There were about 3 different things like this from what we saw, and we weren't really sure what to make of it.
We rested here for a bit, taking in the view westwards over the valley, and I went on a little bug hunt:
Right away I found this adorable little grey mantis (Ameles decolor) (photo 25-27) right behind where Etienne was sat. Greece is the eastern limit for this mantis species more commonly found around the central West Mediterranean. Like all mantises, this species is a predator of other arthropods, using its excellent camouflage and slow stealthy movement to remain undetected until within striking range of an unsuspecting insect. They extend their spiked raptorial forelegs to rapidly grab prey in a startlingly fast action. This particular species of mantis is also known for having one of the most complex mating rituals of all mantises, including various abdominal movements, lateral 'boxing' with their front legs, and stamping with their other legs. Finding a mantis inspired me to go and find a mantis ootheca to show Etienne, as I've had some success in the past finding them under rocks in Spain. An ootheca is a form of egg mass formed when the adult mantis lays her eggs in a frothy mass produced by glands in its abdomen. This froth includes structural proteins and also tanning agents that cause the protein to harden around the eggs, providing protection. I quickly found one under a nearby small pile of stones (which appeared to be man-made but I'm not sure what for), an old crisped one that the mantises had all already hatched from, leaving behind a series of visible chambers (photo 28). Moving onwards, I also found a broad green-winged grasshopper (Aiolopus strepens) (photo 29), which is native to Africa, the Middle East, and southern Europe. This one is a male, distinguished by its relatively small abdomen, which doesn't even reach the length of the forewings.
Coming back around the east side of the Panagia ridge and heading back on track towards Mycenae, Etienne and I dropped down through a series of old levelled rings around the hillside, similar to stepped vineyards, perhaps for ease of olive harvesting at some point, though the groves here were very over grown and the walls maintaining each level looked very old, though probably not quite Mycenaean. On the way, I found an old, cracked, sun-dried twig of olive which harboured a tiny toadstool (photo 30). This is a sulcate sunhead (Heliocybe sulcata) I think, an unusual fungus and the only member of its genus. It is named after its cap (pileus), which is radially cracked into ridges, like the beams of a cartoon sun, though its preference of cracked, sun-dried wood is also fitting of the name. Interestingly, Mycenae itself might be named after toadstools such as this. You may have noticed the word '-mycetes' associated with lots of fungal stuff, or know that the study of fungi is mycology, or that some plants have mycorrhizal associations with fungi in their roots. These all derive from the Ancient Greek word for mushroom 'mykēs' (μύκης), and one legend about the origin of Mycenae's name also has it based on the pre-Ancient Greek equivalent of this word in Linear B, whereby Perseus names it after a mushroom he picked on the site (though there are other theories for the name, and this one is one of the more mythological ones).
4.2: back on track
Up until this point, Etienne and I had been exploring freely on the semi-wild olive groves west of Mycenae's acropolis, where 5 of the 9 tholoi lie along with a few other archaeologically features and lots of wildlife. These areas were less visited by tourists, and generally little-known and we saw nobody else, but after dropping down to the main road, all the rest of our journey would be within the fenced-off main sites of Mycenae, which we paid to get into and found other people also there. The other people being present wasn't surprising since this is such a significant and famous ancient site, in fact, if anything, I was surprised at how few other tourists were here in the main parts of the archaeological site at Mycenae.
Our first stop in Mycenae's main tourist area, still on our mission to find all the tholoi, was what is one of the most famous tombs of all time (obviously it can't really be compared to pyramids and other such tomb structures), the Treasury of Atreus, also known as the Tomb of Agamemnon (photo 31-35). This Group III tomb is similar in shape to Tomb of the Genii, except much larger. It is colossal in a way that doesn't show in photographs unless you have someone standing next to its massive stone bricks for scale. Etienne is taller than me and wasn't even as tall as the top of the 3rd stone up around the stomion. I still found finding the Tomb of Genii much cooler, but I have to admit that the shear scale of this tomb is incredible. The inside was huge and echoey like being in a cathedral, and is also the only tholos here to have a separate side chamber that goes into another, cave-like room that in itself is nearly as big as some of the other tombs. Being such a huge structure, with an immense amount of labour required to construct it, it is thought that this tomb might have been intended for the burial of the ruler of Mycenae late into the Bronze Age, when Mycenae was becoming an increasingly dominant power among the Mycenaean kingdoms and throughout the Bronze Age Mediterranean as a whole. It is often particularly associated with the somewhat mythical king Atreus, or his son Agamemnon, who were both said to be king of Mycenae in their time, though there is no evidence to suggest it was specifically either of them.
While in the Treasury of Atreus, Etienne and I wanted to make use of the incredible acoustics of this ancient site, and decided to record a video of us singing a song we both knew from going to Stonyhurst College - the Pater Noster, which is basically Stonyhurst's anthem and is also the 'Our Father' prayer in Church Latin (if you look it up online there's only boring chants of it, Stonyhurst's version is more musical and I think is also based on another tune that I don't remember). Anyway here's the video:
After that nonsense, and a quick visit to the nearby ancient remains of the Panagia Houses, we headed up the road to the main fenced-off site in Mycenae, which included our last three tholoi to visit, the acropolis of Mycenae, and a few other things too. First was the Tomb of Clytemnestra (photo 36), named arbitrarily after Clytemnestra, the wife of king Agamemnon. This is the final Group III tomb along with the Tomb of the Genii and Treasury of Atreus, and is an example of how separate the later Ancient Greek were from their ancestors the Mycenaeans. This structure, which was likely much respected as a burial site for a very important person, became completely buried and lost, and, during the Hellenistic period (323-146BC), a whole theatre was built on the mound on top of its, with some of the old seating steps still being visible atop the dromos even today, after the tomb was first found in Ottoman times. Beside the Tomb of Clytemnestra is the Tomb of Aegisthus (photo 37), named after the mythological killer of Atreus, and lover of Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, whom he aided in murdering Agamemnon (Agamemnon totally had it coming though). This is the tomb that provoked thoughts about defining a 4th distinct group in the tombs here, as it appears to represent a somewhat intermediate architectural form between Group I and Group II, with small irregular stones being used along with more advanced ashlar masonry (cuboidal stones that fit very well together) and a relieving triangle at the top of the stomion. It was around this time that it began to pour with rain again, so we
quickly rushed to the final Tholos, Lion Tomb (photo 38), a Group II tomb named after its close proximity to the Lion Gates, the entrance to Mycenae's acropolis, before heading into the nearby museum to pass the time while the rain passed.
Part 5: Mycenae
After the museum, and also getting thoroughly distracted by a cat which we named Pelé (photo 39), it was around 3:30PM and we were finally ready to approach the Lion Gates (photo 40) and see the Acropolis of Mycenae.
5.1: The Myths
Here are some myths that explain why I think Mycenae is so cool:
Perseus
Perseus is one of the most well-known characters in history. He was the son of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, and Danaë, princess of Argos and daughter of Acrisius the king of Argos.
It is said that Acrisius was given a prophecy by the Oracle at Delphi that he would one day be killed by his daughter's son. In typical self-fulfilling prophecy fashion, Acrisius imprisons his daughter Danaë in hopes of preventing her from having a son, but also giving any potential son ample motivation to fulfill said prophecy. While imprisoned, Zeus comes to Danaë in a shower of gold and fathered her son, who she named Perseus. When Acrisius found out about this, he knew he couldn't kill Perseus directly, for fear of angering the gods, especially Zeus, so he instead decided that casting them both into the sea in a wooden chest was the next best option.
The pair managed to survive, staying afloat at sea and washing up on the island of Seriphos, where they were taken in by local fisherman Dictys, the brother of the Island's king, Polydectes. Growing up on the island, Perseus was sent on a quest by Polydectes (for reasons that I won't go into). He was tasked with killing and bringing home the head of Medusa, the only mortal Gorgon, whose gaze turned people to stone. You all know the story, and this is what Perseus is most famous for.
He becomes associated with Mycenae when he fulfils the prophecy and kills his father, completely by accident in some rather silly myths, such as the Bibliotheca's version where Perseus was competing in the funeral games set up by the king of Larissa in honour of his father, and missed his discus throw, accidentally striking and instantly killing Acrisius who was in the audience.
After this, Perseus is next in line for the Throne at Argos, but couldn't fulfil the role honourably due to the whole manslaughter thing, so he instead gave the throne to Megapenthes. According to Pausanius, Perseus headed a little north from Argos and founded his own city - Mycenae, hiring help from the great cyclopes to construct its immense outer walls, which has led to the modern term Cyclopean Masonry, for the Ancient Greeks believed that only the cyclopes had the strength to build using such huge boulders when they came across their ancestors' settlements at Mycenae.
Heracles
Not only was Mycenae founded by the mythological hero Perseus, but it was also the origin of the twelve Labours of Heracles (Hercules). Jumping in part-way through the story, having been driven temporarily mad by Hera, Heracles slew his family, and, when regaining his senses, sought the Oracle to find out how he must atone. The solution was apparently to go and serve his cousin Eurystheus, king of Mycenae's territories at the time, being a descendent of Perseus. Eurystheus gave Heracles his twelve tasks (you know, kill the hydra and all that jazz?).
It would eventually be Heracles' descendants who would kill Eurystheus, assisted by the Athenians, after Eurystheus had grown bitter from being humiliated by Heracles' completion of his impossible tasks, and took it out on his kids after Heracles had died/ascended to godhood. Following the death of Eurystheus at the hand of Heracles' children, it was then Atreus who took the throne of Mycenae.
The Trojan War and end of Mycenae
The final myth to feature Mycenae heavily is the Epic Cycle itself, a series of epic poems from Ancient Greece, along with the Iliad and the Odyssey (which are usually assigned separately as Homeric Epics despite being a part of the same overarching story), two of the most influencial pieces of literature ever. These retell the story of the Trojan war, including events leading up to it, and the aftermath. They likely recount a real historical event, exaggerated and twisted greatly into the stories of gods and heroes we have today, but this bit is just for the myth:
The story starts with Helen, half-sister to Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, and supposedly the most beautiful woman in the world. Pretty much every important figure at the time wants her hand in marriage, and its pretty clear that whoever does get it will invoke such jealousy in everyone else that they risk all-out war throughout the Mycenaean kingdoms. Helen and her stepfather king Tyndareus don't know what to do until a man by the name of Odysseus, seemingly the only person around who isn't in love with Helen, offers to give them a solution if Tyndareus promises to put in a good word with another spartan king, father of Penelope, who Odysseus is in love with. Tyndareus agrees and Odysseus suggests to him that all suitors be made to swear an oath to protect Helen's marriage, despite who ends up being chosen, thereby preventing them from waging war. The lucky guy ends up being Menelaus, who wasn't even present at the time and sent Agamemnon to represent him (maybe being represented by Helen's brother-in-law helped out, even if Agamemnon is just the worst).
Meanwhile, somewhere else, the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite are attending the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (Peleus was a hero-king and Thetis a sea nymph, and they are the parents of Achilles, so it kinda makes sense that gods attend their wedding I guess). The goddess Eris is jealous, as she wasn't invited and decides to sow some discourse by appearing and offering an golden apple to whichever of the three goddesses is the fairest. To settle the resulting dispute, the 3 choose Paris (a Trojan Prince), to judge the competition of who is the fairest of them all, each offering to reward him a specific gift if he chooses them. Paris votes Aphrodite the fairest after she offered to make the most beautiful woman in the world fall in love with him, which she then does.
Problem: the most beautiful woman in the world is Helen, who has now magically been made to love Paris by Aphrodite, and who is already married to Menelaus, with most of the Mycenaean world now being sworn on oath to protect that marriage. Inevitably this leads to the Trojan war, between Troy and the Mycenaean kingdoms. The major part of this war was the ten-year siege of Troy, led by Agamemnon of Mycenae (who killed his daughter, angered Achilles, and was generally unlikable throughout the war, and was eventually killed by his wife and her new lover Aegisthus when he returned to Mycenae). Agamemnon was avenged by his son Orestes, who was then pursued by the fates for killing his mother all the way to Athens in another story - The Oresteia, where Athena basically invents democracy as an early form of the Athenian judiciary system (a cool connection to what Etienne and I had been exploring last week in Athens). This leaves Orestes' grandson as the last king of Mycenae, eventually being slain by further descendants of Heracles.
5.1: snap back to reality
Just as Etienne and I were approaching the Lion Gates, we heard a shout from down the hill: 'FIVE MORE MINUTES!' Evidently the fenced-off pay-to-enter protected area closed around 3:30PM, at least in January. We hadn't even considered this beforehand, and, in a panic, Etienne quickly ran through the Lion Gates and sprinted around taking in as much of the inside of the Mycenae Acropolis as possible before we had to leave. Pelé the cat followed calmly into the acropolis, evidently expecting more petting, while I couldn't stop admiring the outer fortification walls of the acropolis (photo 41). They truly are cyclopean, on a scale that doesn't show up well in photos. Each stone brick is so much more massive than it looks in photos, like at the Treasure of Atreus, stacking up to 3 before being taller than us. I meandered up to the Lion Gates (photo 42), with the two headless lion carvings on top (photo 43), and entered the acropolis. I didn't explore the inside much, instead opting to take in this entrance area, which was gorgeous (photo 44). The rain overnight had also brought snow to the highest peaks, so when looking out through the Lion Gates from within the ancient city I could see the snow-coated slopes of Mount Chióni at 2,088m, literally translating to Snow Mountain (photo 45-47). I wonder if, over 3,000 years ago, some ancient Mycenaean was also admiring this view from right were I stood behind the great Lion Gates.
It wasn't long before we had to leave the main archaeological site of Mycenae, but that isn't the end. The late afternoon lighting was too nice to just leave, so we took the scenic route, heading down into overgrown meadow beneath the acropolis, where there also seemed to be some archaeological excavations (photo 48). From here, the views back up to Mycenae were gorgeous, a structure perfectly positioned in the countryside to both stand out and blend in (photo 49-51). We clambered down and up the other side of some weird trench that seemed to be a sloped ravine caused by an old river, and came to a gravel track, which we followed away from Mycenae, heading back to Fichti to catch the bus. The slope on either side of this track was filled with lush green grass, but all the olive trees had been burnt to a crisp from the wildfires back in 2020 which temporarily caused panic for fear of damage to the remains of Mycenae. It was interesting to see as we headed south away from the site.
5.2 final distractions
While heading back, Etienne noticed a large ground beetle scurrying across the path (photo 52). Upon closer inspection, this carabid had metallic blue margins to its elytra, similar to the purple of violet ground beetles back in the UK. It turns out that this species is Carabus preslii, a species which I can't find much information on at all. Observations of this species on iNaturalist have only been submitted from the Peloponnese peninsula, but I also found a paper which caught some in the mountains of southern Italy, so it isn't endemic here. Either way, it was a very pretty beetle.
Also while heading south along this track we once again got views down the valley towards the Argolic Gulf and the city of Argos itself, and this time I decided to zoom in on a prominent hill just above Argos, which appeared to have some castle-like structure on it (photo 53). This is the ancient acropolis of Argos, known as Larissa, which also dates back to Mycenaean times (remember the story of Perseus), but was drastically changed in the 12th Century AD, when the Byzantines founded a new castle there, now called Larissa Castle. On the lower slopes, as seen on the left, there is now also a church on Larissa, originally a monastery founded in the 1700s. The official title of the monastery was the Monastery of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, a real mouthful of a name relating to a story about the Virgin Mary, however, it is now commonly called Panagia-Katakekrymeni-Portokalousa Argous, which roughly translates to 'Our Hidden Lady the Orange-Bearer of Argos'. This name refers to an ancient icon of Panagia (Virgin Mary) hidden in a cave below the church, hidden by the branches of orange trees. After spotting this in the distance, not much more happened on the way back, although we did find the collapsed remains of an old Mycenaean bridge over the ravine, and picked an orange form the valley, which I thought was delicious but Etienne didn't like and threw away before I had a chance to object.
Part 6: the Corinth Canal
After more games of chess on the bus back to Isthmus, which was full so I sat on the floor, we disembarked at dusk and decided that, before calling it a day and heading back to Corinth, we'd see on more site. The bus station at Isthmus is right besides a road bridge over the Corinth Canal (photo 54-55), so we headed over to marvel at the ridiculously huge trench connection the Ionian and Aegean seas. Such a way to make a way to sail ships via the Isthmus of Corinth, rather than having to go around the whole Peloponnese of transport to boast over land was proposed by Periander of Corinth all the way back in the 7th Century BC, but it was only after Greek independence from Ottoman rule in 1830 that the idea was revisisted. Construction began in 1882 and was completed in 1893, to disappointing results. Far from being a new and useful sea highway like the Suez Canal before it (1869), the Corinth Canal experienced financial and operational difficulties from the start. It was too narrow, making navigation difficult, and channelled strong winds and tidal currents hemmed in by its high walls. The heavily faulted nature of the rock at the margins of the canal don't help, with not infrequent landslides further discouraging the canal's use. Today it is mostly a cool attraction used by small recreational boats, and was closed due to more landslides, due to open sometime later in 2023.
Part 7: conclusion
I think I've said enough by now honestly, this is thousands of words long and describes one of the best days I've had so far. Mycenae is an incredible place that I would definitely explore again. Thanks for reading.