MYCENÆ, in Ancient Geography, a town of Argolis, in
Peloponnesus. The kingdom of the Argives was divided
into two portions by Acrisius and his brother Prætus, and
Argos and Mycenæ were their capitals. These, as belong-
ing to the same family, and distant only about fifty stadia,
or six miles and a quarter from each other, had one tut-
tleary deity, Juno, and they were joint proprietors of her
temple, the Heræum, which was near Mycenæ. It was
here that Agamemnon reigned. He enlarged his domi-
nions by his valour and good fortune, and possessed, be-
sides Mycenæ, the region about Corinth and Sicyon, and
that which was afterwards denominated Achæa. On his
return from Troy, he was slain with his companions at a
banquet. Mycenæ then declined, and under the Heracli-
dæ was made subject to Argos. The Mycenæans, having
furnished eighty 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 seventy-eighth Olympiad, or 466 years before Christ.
Some part of the wall remained in the second century, with
a gate, upon which were lions, a fountain, the subterra-
nean edifices where Atreus and his sons had deposited their
treasures, and, amongst various sepulchral monuments, one
of Agamemnon, and another of his fellow-soldiers and suf-
ferers.