MYCENÆ (anc. geog.) a town of Argolis, in Peloponnesus. The kingdom of the Argives was divided into two portions by Acrisius and his brother Proetus. Argos and Mycenæ were their capitals.—These, as belonging to the same family, and distant only about 50 stadia or six miles and a quarter from each other, had one tutelary deity, Juno, and were jointly proprietors of her temple, the Heræum, which was near Mycenæ. It was here that Agamemnon reigned. He enlarged his dominions by his valour and good fortune, and possessed, besides Mycenæ, the region about Corinth and Sicyon, and that called afterwards Achæa. On his return from Troy, he was slain with his companions at a banquet. Mycenæ then declined; and under the Heraclidæ was made subject to Argos. (See ARGOS and ARGIA.) The Mycenæans, sending 80 men, partook with the Lacedæmonians in the glory acquired at Thermopylæ. The jealousy of the Argives produced the destruction of their city, which was abandoned after a siege, and laid waste in the first year of the 78th Olympiad, or 466 years before Christ. Some part of the wall remained in the second century, with a gate, on which were lions, a fountain, the subterraneous edifices where Atreus and his sons had deposited their treasures and, among other sepulchral monuments, one of Agamemnon, and one of his fellow-soldiers and sufferers.