The later Homeric bards, who were followed by the tragic poets, seem to have formed the myths of the horrid deeds of Atreus and Thyestes by carrying back the outrages in the house of Agamemnon into the former generation; and, by the help of other traditions, and particularly from the history of the kings of Thebes, they devised a concatenation of crimes and mischief, which had its first origin in the murder of Myrtilus or in that of Chrysippus.[149] [Sidenote: AGAMEMNON'S DOMINION.] It appears from Homer[150] that Agamemnon had brought under his sceptre nearly all the Peloponnesus. But according to another passage[151] it would appear that he reigned only over its whole northern part. The dynasty of the Pelopids appears to have ceased in Mycenæ with the death of Ægisthus, for tradition says that Agamemnon's son Orestes reigned in Arcadia and Sparta, but not that he succeeded his father. According to Strabo,[152] he died in Arcadia. Pausanias[153] states that his tomb was at first on the roadside between Sparta and Tegea; at a later time his bones were buried in Sparta.[154] Neither of the two sons of Orestes, Penthilus and Tisamenus, seems to have reigned at Mycenæ. Strabo[155] says that they remained in the Æolian colonies in Asia Minor, which had been founded by their father. According to Pausanias,[156] the invasion of the Dorians had already occurred in the time of Orestes; according to Thucydides,[157] it took place eighty years after the Trojan war. Pausanias seems probably to be in the right, because only a fearful political revolution and catastrophe can have prevented Orestes from becoming king in Mycenæ, which was the richest and most powerful state of Greece, and which belonged to him as only son to the glorious and universally lamented Agamemnon. Strabo[158] confirms the statement that the decline of Mycenæ; began with the death of Agamemnon and particularly from the return of the Heracleidæ. But, though the city had decayed in power and population and had sunk to the rank of a small provincial town, yet it kept up a certain independence; and, inspired by the reminiscences of its glorious past, it equipped eighty men as its contingent at Thermopylæ,[159] and a year later, in conjunction with Tiryns, it sent 400 men to Platææ.[160] The name of Mycenæ was engraved, together with those of the other cities which had participated in this glorious campaign, on the brazen column representing three serpents sustaining a golden tripod, which the Spartans dedicated to the Delphian Apollo as a tithe of the booty taken from the Persians. This brazen column stands now on the old hippodrome (the present Maidan) in Constantinople, whither it was probably brought by Constantine the Great. The Argives, who had remained neutral, envied the Myceneans the honour of having participated in these battles, and they feared besides, considering the city's ancient glory, that Mycenæ might usurp the dominion of the whole Argolid.