After the Trojan war, when the dominion of Agamemnon was at an end, the declension of Mycenæ ensued, and particularly after the return of the Heracleidæ.[196] For when these people got possession of Peloponnesus, they expelled its former masters, so that they who had Argos possessed Mycenæ likewise, as composing one body. In subsequent times Mycenæ was razed by the Argives, so that at present not even a trace is to be discovered of the city of the Mycenæans.[197]
If Mycenæ experienced this fate, it is not surprising that some of the cities mentioned in the Catalogue of the Ships, and said to be subject to Argos, have disappeared. These are the words of the Catalogue:
“They who occupied Argos, and Tiryns, with strong walls, and Hermione, and Asine situated on a deep bay, and Eïones, and Epidaurus with its vines, and the valiant Achæan youths who occupied Ægina, and Mases.”[198]
Among these we have already spoken of Argos; we must now speak of the rest.
11. Prœtus seems to have used Tiryns as a stronghold, and to have fortified it by means of the Cyclopes. There were seven of them, and were called Gasterocheires,[199] because they subsisted by their art. They were sent for and came from Lycia. Perhaps the caverns about Nauplia, and the works there, have their name from these people. The citadel Licymna has its name from Licymnius. It is distant from Nauplia about 12 stadia. This place is deserted, as well as the neighbouring Midéa, which is different from the Bœotian Mídea, for that is accentuated Mídea, like πρόνοια, but this is accentuated Midéa, like Tegéa.
Prosymna borders upon Midéa; it has also a temple of Juno. The Argives have depopulated most of these for their refusal to submit to their authority. Of the inhabitants some went from Tiryns to Epidaurus; others from Hermione to the Halieis (the Fishermen), as they are called; others were transferred by the Lacedæmonians to Messenia from Asine, (which is itself a village in the Argive territory near Nauplia,) and they built a small city of the same name as the Argolic Asine. For the Lacedæmonians, according to Theopompus, got possession of a large tract of country belonging to other nations, and settled there whatever fugitives they had received, who had taken refuge among them; and it was to this country the Nauplians had retreated.
12. Hermione is one of the cities, not undistinguished. The coast is occupied by Halieis, as they are called, a tribe who subsist by being employed on the sea in fishing. There is a general opinion among the Hermionenses that there is a short descent from their country to Hades, and hence they do not place in the mouths of the dead the fare for crossing the Styx.
13. It is said that Asine as well as Hermione was inhabited by Dryopes; either Dryops the Arcadian having transferred them thither from the places near the Spercheius, according to Aristotle; or, Hercules expelled them from Doris near Parnassus.