Mycenae
Mycenae was the great Bronze Age citadel in the Argolid, seat of King Agamemnon who led the Greek expedition against Troy — its Lion Gate still stands after 3,200 years.
The Story of Mycenae
Founded by Perseus, son of Zeus and Danaë, Mycenae became the most powerful city in Greece during the Late Bronze Age. Agamemnon ruled from here when he summoned the Greek kings to war against Troy. Upon his return, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered him in his bath. His son Orestes later avenged him, setting off the chain of blood guilt dramatised by Aeschylus. When Schliemann excavated Mycenae in 1876, he found gold death masks, including one he famously (if wrongly) declared to be "the face of Agamemnon."
Parents
Founded by Perseus
Symbols
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Ilium
🏛 placeGeography
The citadel of Troy, site of the legendary ten-year siege by the Greek forces
Corinth
🏛 placeCity of Sisyphus and Medea
Corinth was a wealthy trading city on the narrow isthmus connecting mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, associated with Sisyphus, Medea, Bellerophon, and Pegasus.
Pherae
🏛 placeGeography
A city in Thessaly where Admetus ruled and Alcestis chose to die in her husband's place
Thebes
🏛 placeCity of Cadmus and Oedipus
Thebes was the great city of Boeotia, founded by Cadmus who sowed dragon teeth, and the setting for the tragedies of Oedipus, Antigone, and the Seven Against Thebes.
Sicyon
🏛 placeGeography
An ancient city near Corinth claiming to be one of the oldest in Greece and site of Prometheus's sacrifice trick
Colchis
🏛 placeLand of the Golden Fleece
Colchis was a kingdom at the eastern edge of the Greek world, on the shore of the Black Sea in modern Georgia, famous as the destination of Jason and the Argonauts.
Argos
🏛 placecity-state, Peloponnese
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and a major power in the Peloponnese, closely associated with the goddess Hera.
Grave Circle A at Mycenae
🏛 placeburial, treasure
The royal burial ground at Mycenae where Schliemann discovered the golden death masks, connecting Homeric mythology to archaeological reality.
Acrocorinth
🏛 placegeography
The towering citadel rock above Corinth, sacred to Aphrodite and site of her famous temple.
Tegea
🏛 placegeography
An Arcadian city with a great temple of Athena Alea, and possessor of the tusks of the Calydonian Boar and the bones of Orestes.
Troy
🏛 placeCity besieged in the Trojan War
The legendary city in Asia Minor besieged by the Greeks for ten years in the Trojan War. Troy's fall — achieved through the deception of the wooden horse — is one of myth's defining moments.
Orchomenus
🏛 placecity, Boeotia
An ancient Boeotian city that was one of the wealthiest in Bronze Age Greece, rivalling Thebes and associated with the Minyans.