CHAPTER XVIII.
And as you go from Mycenæ to Argos there is on the left hand a hero-chapel of Perseus near the road. He has honours here from the people in the neighbourhood, but the greatest honours are paid him at Seriphus, and he has also a temple among the Athenians, and in it an altar to Dictys and Clymene, who are called the Saviours of Perseus. And as you advance on the road to Argos a little way from this hero-chapel is the tomb of Thyestes on the right hand: and on it is a ram in stone, for Thyestes stole the golden sheep, when he seduced his brother’s wife. And Atreus could not be satisfied with the law of Tit for Tat, but slaughtered the children of Thyestes and served them up to him at table. But afterwards I cannot pronounce decidedly whether Ægisthus began the injury, or whether it began with the murder of Tantalus the son of Thyestes by Agamemnon: for they say he married Clytæmnestra as her first husband having received her from Tyndareus. And I do not wish to accuse them of wickedness incarnate. But if the crime of Pelops and the ghost of Myrtilus haunted the family so ruthlessly, it reminds one of the answer of the Pythian Priestess to Glaucus the son of Epicydes the Spartan, when he purposed perjury, that punishment would come on his descendants.
As you go on a little to the left from the Rams, for so they call the tomb of Thyestes, is a place called Mysia, and a temple of Mysian Demeter, so called from a man called Mysius, who was as the Argives say a host of Demeter. It has no roof. And in it is a shrine of baked brick, and images of Proserpine and Pluto and Demeter. And a little further is the river Inachus, and on the other side of the river is an altar of the Sun. And you will go thence to the gate called from the neighbouring temple, the temple of Ilithyia.
The Argives are the only Greeks I know of who were divided into three kingdoms. For in the reign of Anaxagoras, the son of Argos, the son of Megapenthes, a madness came on the women, they went from their homes and wandered up and down the country, till Melampus the son of Amythaon cured them of that complaint, on condition that he and his brother Bias should share alike with Anaxagoras. And five kings of Bias’ race reigned for four generations to Cyanippus the son of Ægialeus, being all descended from Neleus on the mother’s side, and from Melampus six generations and six kings to Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus. But the native race, the descendants of Anaxagoras, reigned longer. For Iphis, the son of Alector, the son of Anaxagoras, left the kingdom to Sthenelus the son of his brother Capaneus: and Amphilochus after the capture of Ilium having migrated to what is now called Amphilochi, and Cyanippus dying childless, Cylarabes the son of Sthenelus had the kingdom alone. And he too had no children, and so Orestes the son of Agamemnon got Argos, as he was a near neighbour, and besides his hereditary sway had added to his dominions much Arcadian territory, and as he had also got the kingdom in Sparta, and had ever ready help in the alliance of the Phocians. And he was king of the Lacedæmonians at their own request. For they thought the sons of Tyndareus’ daughters better entitled to the kingdom than Nicostratus and Megapenthes, the sons of Menelaus by a bondmaid. And when Orestes died Tisamenus, the son of Orestes by Hermione the daughter of Menelaus, had the kingdom. And Penthilus, Orestes’ bastard son by Erigone the daughter of Ægisthus, is mentioned by Cinæthon in his Verses. It was in the reign of this Tisamenus that the Heraclidæ returned to the Peloponnese, viz. Temenus and Cresphontes the sons of Aristomachus, and, as Aristodemus had died earlier, his sons came too. And they laid claim to Argos and its kingdom on it seems to me the justest grounds, for Tisamenus was a descendant of Pelops, but the Heraclidæ derived from Perseus. And they represented that Tyndareus had been turned out by Hippocoon, and they said that Hercules had slain Hippocoon and his sons, and had given the country back to Tyndareus. Similarly they said about Messenia, that it was given to Nestor as a charge by Hercules when he took Pylos. They turned out therefore Tisamenus from Lacedæmon and Argos, and the descendants of Nestor from Messenia, viz. Alcmæon the son of Sillus the son of Thrasymedes, and Pisistratus the son of Pisistratus, and the sons of Pæon the son of Antilochus, and besides them Melanthus the son of Andropompus, the son of Borus, the son of Penthilus, the son of Periclymenus. So Tisamenus and his sons went to what is now called Achaia with his army: and all the other sons of Neleus but Pisistratus, (for I don’t know to what people he betook himself), went to Athens, and the Pæonidæ and the Alcmæonidæ were called after them. Melanthus also had the kingdom, after driving out Thymœtes, the son of Oxyntas, who was the last of the descendants of Theseus that reigned at Athens.