Mycenae
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Definitions
- 1 An ancient Greek city in the NE Peloponnesus on the plain of Argos, inhabited since about 4000 B.C.E.
"1958, Alan John Bayard Wace, Elizabeth Bayard French, The Mycenae Tablets II, American Philosophical Society, page 1, The excavators of Mycenae added in 1953 and 1954 important new materials to the small but excellent archives of Mycenae."
Example
More examples""High in the citadel the monstrous frame / pours forth an armed deluge to the day, / and Sinon, puffed with triumph, spreads the flame. / Part throng the gates, part block each narrow way; / such hosts Mycenae sends, such thousands to the fray.""
Etymology
From Latin Mycenae, Ancient Greek Μυκῆναι (Mukênai), the name of the Ancient Greek city, from Μυκήνη (Mukḗnē), a nymph in Greek mythology who lived around Mycenae. Doublet of Mykines. Two traditional etymologies exist: * According to Pausanias, Perseus, the legendary founder of the city, named it either after the cap of the sheath of his sword or after a mushroom he had plucked on the site (either way, the term would derive from Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs)). * Homer connected the name to the abovementioned Mycene (or Mykene), daughter of Inachus, first King of Argos (Odyssey, 2.120). Homer was not alone in identifying Inachus as a river god, and thus Mycene as a nymph.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.