Mycenae
If you're going to make your brother eat his kids' flesh, expect a run of family murders and eventual ruin, no matter how strong your city walls are.
I’ve just spent two weeks in Greece and Italy, and I’ve been publishing small anecdotes as I go, originally to LinkedIn.
They’ve proven popular, so I’m collecting and publishing them here under the clever section title ‘McKaypedia,’ a nod to my reputation for providing rapid verbal distillations of historical sites while I’m on holiday.
I’ve scribbled notes for another half a dozen of these, so if you don’t like them, manage your subscription so this section doesn’t come to you.
Alternatively, if you love them, upgrade to paid, so I can afford to travel more places and tell you more things like this.
Yesterday I went to Mycenae. I stood in the ruins of a palace that was built in 1300 BC, but this site was inhabited back to between 2,000-3,000BC - which makes my head explode.
Perseus founded Mycenae - he wasn’t all bad, even though he did decapitate Medusa, (which I grumped about here.)
Perseus' maternal grandfather Acrisius was afraid of him because Pythia at the Oracle of Delphi predicted his grandson would kill him.
Sure enough, Acrisius and Perseus were casually hanging out one day, then bam, discus to the head. Pythia might have a been a hallucinogenic drug user, but she knew her stuff. Perseus COULD have inherited the rule of Argos, but he felt bad for accidentally killing his grandad, so he founded Mycenae.
Once he got things set up, he had some Cyclops (yeah, the one-eyed monsters) build some serious walls. The kind of walls that will survive until I wander past 3200 years later.
A few kings after Perseus was Atreus. He didn’t get on well with his brother Thyestes and in a next level sibling prank, made him eat the flesh of his own kids. Punkd! They call this a Thyestean feast.
The gods didn’t like that, so they wrathed him. Hard.
You might know Atreus' son, Agamemnon.
Agamemnon was off leading the Greeks against Troy while all this kid-eating and wrathing was happening. When he got home, his wife Clytemenstra killed him, along with her boyfriend. Which doesn’t sound great, but he HAD tricked her into bringing their daughter to be sacrificed before he left, and was a total fuckboi. He even brought his side-chick Cassandra home from Troy. Still, rough week.
Their son, Orestes, killed Clytemenstra and her boyfriend to avenge Agamemnon’s death. Which was legally dicey, so he went on the lam until an Athenian court acquitted him. (Which is typical. Agamemnon's out there sacrificing daughters and murdering thousands in Troy. Clytemenstra does ONE murder, and it's lights out.)
Back to Mycenae. Orestes’ son Tisamenos was the last king before the place was abandoned for most of history. He got killed in a regular war like a normal person.
The Mycenaeans were exceptional engineers. Their buildings and water systems were way ahead of their time. They’ve survived wars, natural disasters, fires, and 32 centuries, and I can walk down inside their buildings. Fucking wild.
It rained after this, for the first time since I came to Greece. Which either means Poseidon’s pissed off, or Persephone’s poked her head up from the underworld, but there's no time to get into that today. Let’s assume it was just weather.
This was a McKaypedia post - a collection of pithy explanations of history, geography, or politics, inspired by my travels. If you don’t enjoy these, feel free to turn manage your subscription so you’re only getting main feed content.
If you LOVE these, upgrade to paid, so I can afford to travel to more places and tell you more shit like this.
Catch up on McKaypedia here
Here’s the ones I’ve published already, without email. Featuring headless rape victims, high-as-balls fortune tellers and philosophers with bright ideas and questionable family loyalty.
Delphi
On Saturday I took a bus to Delphi, an ancient city state most famous for the Temple of Apollo where, for generations, a powerful oracle was said to live.
Serifos
This morning I rose before dawn to climb the hill up to the Castle of Chora on Serifos island.
