AGAMEMNON AND ORESTES. 165 a new home, when they were no longer able to make head against the invading Dorians: the great families at Tenedos and other ^Eolic cities even during the historical rcra, gloried in tracing back their pedigrees to this illustrious source. 1 The legends con- nected with the heroic worship of these mythical ancestors form the basis of the character and attributes of Agamemnon and his family, as depicted in Homer, in which Mykenas appears as the first place in Peloponnesus, and Sparta only as the second : the former the special residence of " the king of men ; " the latter that of his younger and inferior brother, yet still the seat of a member of the princely Pelopids, and moreover the birth-place of the divine Helen. Sparta, Argos and Mykenoe are all three des*<2jnated in the Iliad by the goddess Here as her favorite cities; 2 yet ihe connection of Mykena3 with Argos, though the two towns were only ten miles distant, is far less intimate than the connec- tion of Mykenas with Sparta. When we reflect upon the very peculiar manner in which Homer identifies Here with the Grecian host and its leader, for she watches over the Greeks with the active solicitude of a mother, and her antipathy against the Tro- jans is implacable to a degree which Zeus cannot comprehend, 3 and when we combine this with the ancient and venerated Herseon, or temple of Here, near Mykenas, we may partly ex- plain to ourselves the preeminence conferred upon Mykense in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Heraon was situated between Argos and Mykenae ; in later times its priestesses were named and its affairs administered by the Argeians : but as it was much nearer 1 See the ode of Pindar addressed to Aristagoras of Tenedos (Ncm. xi 35 ; Strabo, xiii. p. 582). There were Penthilids at Mitylene, from Pcnthi- lus, son of Orestes (Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 13, Schneid.). 1 Iliad, iv. 52. Compare Euripid. Herakleid. 350 ' Iliad, iv. 31. Zeus says to Here, Aoj / uoi't^, ri vv as Upta/tof, Tlpia/Mto re iraiocf Toaaa KaKii pefraKov or' uoTrepxec [tevcaivete 'lAtov Ifa/luTrafru kvurifievov KToXiedpov ; Et <5e ay y elaeh&ovaa wi 'Qftdv pe/Bpudoic Tlpia.fj.ov Hpiafioio 'A/lXovf re 1 jua;, rort xev %6%.ov kS Again, xviii. 358, if pa vv aelo 'Ef airr; tyivovro ttapijKOfioavTee '
