2.18.1 By the side of the road from Mycenae to Argos there is on the left hand a hero-shrine [hērōion] of Perseus. He gets honors [tīmai], as I discovered, from the local-population-nearby [proskhōrioi] here as well [as inside the walls of Mycenae], but the greatest honors are paid to him in Seriphos and among the Athenians, who have a precinct [temenos] sacred to Perseus and an altar [bōmos] of Dictys and Klymene, who are called the saviors [sōtēres] of Perseus. As one advancxes in the Argive territory from this hero-shrine [hērōion], therfe is on the right the tomb [taphos] of Thyestes. On it is a ram [krios] made of stone, because Thyestes obtained a golden lamb [arēn] after seducing his brother’s wife. Atreus was not restrained by prudence [logismos] from retaliating, but contrived the slaughter of the children of Thyestes and the banquet that is sung about in songs.

2.18.2 But as to what followed, I cannot say for certain whether Aigisthos began the injustice [adikiā] or whether Agamemnon was first to commit injustice in killing Tantalos the son of Thyestes. It is said that Tantalos had lived-with [sun-oikeîn]Clytaemnestra, having received her from Tyndareus when she was still a virgin. I myself do not wish to condemn them of having been wicked by nature [phusis]; but if the pollution [miasma] of Pelops and the avenging spirit of Myrtilos dogged their steps so long, it was after all only consistent that the Pythian priestess said to the Spartan Glaukos, the son of Epikydes, who consulted her about breaking his oath, that the punishment for this also comes upon the descendants.

2.18.3 A short distance beyond the Rams [krioi]—this is the name they give to the tomb of Thyestes—there is on the left a place [khōrion] called Mysia and a sanctuary [hieron] of Demeter Mysia, so named after a man Mysios who, say the Argives, was another one of those who acted as a host [xenos] to Demeter. In any case, this sanctuary has no roof, but inside it is another shrine [nāos], built of baked brick, in it are wooden-statues of the Maiden [Korē], Pluto [Ploutōn], and Demeter. Farther on is the river called Inakhos, and on the other side of it an altar [bōmos] of Hēlios [the Sun]. After this you will come to a gate [pulē] named after the sanctuary [hieron] that is near it. This sanctuary belongs to Eileithuia.

2.18.4 The Argives are the only Greeks that I know of who have been divided into three kingdoms. For in the reign of Anaxagoras, son of Argeus, son of Megapenthes, the women were smitten with madness, and straying from their homes they roamed about the country, until Melampos the son of Amythaon cured them of the plague on condition that he himself and his brother Bias had a share of the kingdom equal to that of Anaxagoras. Now descended from Bias five men, Neleids on their mother’s side, occupied the throne for four generations down to Kyanippos, son of Aigialeus, and descended from Melampos six men in six generations down to Amphilokhos, son of Amphiaraos.

2.18.5 But the native house of the lineage of Anaxagoras ruled longer than the other two. For Iphis, son of Alector, son of Anaxagoras, left the throne to Sthenelus, son of Capaneus his brother. After the capture of Troy, Amphilokhos migrated to the people now called the Amphilochians, and, Kyanippos having died without issue, Cylarabes, son of Sthenelus, became sole king. However, he too left no offspring, and Argos was seized by Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who was a neighbor. Besides his ancestral dominion, he had extended his rule over the greater part of Arcadia and had succeeded to the throne of Sparta; he also had a contingent of allies from Phokis always ready to help him.

2.18.6 When Orestes became king of the Lacedaemonians, they themselves consented to accept him for they considered that the sons of the daughter of Tyndareus had a claim to the throne prior to that of Nikostratos and Megapenthes, who were sons of Menelaos by a slave woman. On the death of Orestes, there succeeded to the throne Tisamenus, the son of Orestes and of Hermione, the daughter of Menelaos. The mother of Penthilos, the bastard son of Orestes, was, according to the poet Cinaethon, Erigone, the daughter of Aigisthos.

2.18.7 It was in the reign of this Tisamenus that the Herakleidai returned to the Peloponnesus; they were Temenus and Kresphontes, the sons of Aristomakhos, together with the sons of the third brother, Aristodemos, who had died. Their claim to Argos and to the throne of Argos was, in my opinion, most just, because Tisamenus was descended from Pelops, but the Herakleidai were descendants of Perseus. Tyndareus himself, they made out, had been expelled by Hippokoön, and they said that Hēraklēs, having killed Hippokoön and his sons, had given the land in trust to Tyndareus. They gave the same kind of account about Messenia also, that it had been given in trust to Nestor by Hēraklēs after he had taken Pylos.

2.18.8 So they expelled Tisamenus from Lacedaemon and Argos, and the descendants of Nestor from Messenia, namely Alkmaion, son of Sillus, son of Thrasymedes, Peisistratos, son of Peisistratos, and the sons of Paion, son of Antilokhos, and with them Melanthos, son of Andropompus, son of Borus, son of Penthilos, son of Periclymenus. So Tisamenus and his sons went with his army to the land that is now Achaea.

2.18.9 To what people Peisistratos retreated I do not know, but the rest of the Neleidai went to Athens, and the clans of the Painonidai and of the Alkmaionidai were named after them. Melanthos even came to the throne, having deposed Thymoetes the son of Oxyntes; for Thymoetes was the last Athenian king descended from Theseus.