Nauplia, across the bay from Lerna, is full of suggestion for the prehistoric settlement of Argolis, and of associations with modern history. It has fewer direct points of contact with classic literature. Nauplius, the founder, according to tradition, was the son of Amymone and of Poseidon, who was here able to assert himself against the predominance of Hera further inland. Hera, indeed, had the Achæan Zeus to curb on the north and may have been glad to compromise with Poseidon for a safe-conduct permitting her to make her necessary annual visit to the baths of Kanathos, east of Nauplia. By way of Nauplia, as we have seen, the alphabet may have entered Greece, and here the less valuable but costly cargoes of Trojan spoils were landed, bringing one and another hint and pattern of trans-Ægean art. Here Menelaus, detained by storm long after his brother, finally landed:—
“Back to the land has Menelaus come from Troy,
At Nauplia in harbour moored, while near the beach
The oar-blades fall, returned from his long wandering.”
No more beautiful mooring-place for home-coming warriors could be found than the water-front of Nauplia, lying beneath the majestic rock of Palamidi, guard of the sea-entrance to the Argolid.
On the low acropolis of Tiryns recent excavations have uncovered the “Lower Castle” to the north of the Middle and Upper fortresses already known. Pausanias attributed the founding of Tiryns to members of the Danaus family, Acrisius remaining in Argos and Prœtus taking as his share the Heræum, Midea, Tiryns, and the coast of Argolis. Acrisius, to forestall an oracle, according to which he was to be slain by a grandson, shut up Danaë, his daughter, in a tower of bronze. Zeus descended to her in a shower of gold, and when Perseus was born Acrisius committed to the sea mother and child in a chest. The translation by John Addington Symonds of a fragment from Simonides describing this event fully preserves the pathos for which Simonides was famous:—
“When in the carven chest,
The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest
Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet,
Her arms of love round Perseus set,