19.
We shall next speak of those places which are said, in the Catalogue of the Ships, to be under the government of Mycenæ and Agamemnon: the lines are these:
“Those who inhabited Mycenæ, a well-built city,
and the wealthy Corinth, and Cleonæ well built,
and Orneiæ, and the lovely Aræthyrea,
and Sicyon, where Adrastus first reigned,
and they who inhabited Hyperesia, and the lofty Gonoessa,
and Pellene, and Ægium,
and the whole range of the coast, and those who lived near the spacious Helice.”215
Mycenæ exists no longer. It was founded by Perseus. Sthenelus succeeded Perseus; and Eurystheus, Sthenelus. These same persons were kings of Argos also. It is said that Eurystheus, having engaged, with the assistance of the Athenians, in an expedition to Marathon against the descendants of Hercules and Iolaus, fell in battle, and that the remainder of his body was buried at Gargettus, but his head apart from it at Tricorythus216 (Corinth?), Iolaus having severed it from the body near the fountain Macaria, close to the chariot-road. The spot itself has the name of “Eurystheus’-head.”
Mycenæ then passed into the possession of the Pelopidæ, who had left the Pisatis, then into that of the Heracleidæ, [Pg 60]
[CAS. 377] who were also masters of Argos. But after the sea-fight at Salamis, the Argives, together with the Cleonæi, and the Tegetæ, invaded Mycenæ, and razed it, and divided the territory among themselves. The tragic writers, on account of the proximity of the two cities, speak of them as one, and use the name of one for the other. Euripides in the same play calls the same city in one place Mycenæ, and in another Argos, as in the Iphigeneia,217 and in the Orestes.218
Cleonæ is a town situated upon the road leading from Argos to Corinth, on an eminence, which is surrounded on all sides by dwellings, and well fortified, whence, in my opinion, Cleonæ was properly described as “well built.” There also, between Cleonæ and Phlius, is Nemea, and the grove where it was the custom of the Argives to celebrate the Nemean games: here is the scene of the fable of the Nemean Lion, and here also the village Bembina. Cleonæ is distant from Argos 120 stadia, and 80 from Corinth. And we have ourselves beheld the city from the Acrocorinthus.
