would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the
possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the
smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of
this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.

What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my
opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus,
which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by
those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible
tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy
population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that,
stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this
power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his
descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids.
Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who
had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus,
when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the
government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus
complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by
fear of the Heraclids--besides, his power seemed considerable, and he
had not neglected to court the favour of the populace--and assumed
the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.
And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater
than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon
succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so
that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in
the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his
navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and
that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what
Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his