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In Durrell’s words, the blood-soaked cycle of murder and revenge that destroyed the family of King Agamemnon lingers in the ruined citadel of Mycenae (shown here, compare with photo of Epidaurus), droning on “like the bees that once droned in the tomb of Agamemnon.” According to Greek legend, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra (sister of Helen of Troy) and her lover Aegisthus murdered the Mycenaean king when he returned home from the Trojan War; Clytemnestra was then killed in revenge by her son Orestes. In 1876 Heinrich Schliemann uncovered spectacular royal shaft graves within the circular area enclosed by the citadel’s outer defensive wall.