For these reasons, in league with the Cleoneans and the Tegeatans, they besieged Mycenæ in Ol. LXXVIII. (468 B.C.). The powerful walls of the citadel, behind which the inhabitants had retired, withstood all assaults of the enemy, but at last the Myceneans were forced to surrender for want of food. It appears that, in consideration of the past glory of the city, the victors treated the Myceneans with clemency, for they allowed them to emigrate whither they pleased; and they settled partly at Cleonæ, partly in Cerynia in Achæa, but principally in Macedonia.[161] But this account is not quite confirmed by Diodorus Siculus,[162] who says that on the surrender of Mycenæ the Argives enslaved all the inhabitants. If this is correct, then it is to be supposed that the Argives forced the Myceneans to settle at Argos, because it was very material to them at that time to increase the population of their city. At all events, as Dodwell says, a religious fear seems to have prevented the Argives from destroying the huge Cyclopean walls of the citadels of Mycenæ and Tiryns, because these were considered as sacred enclosures, and were revered as sanctuaries of Hera, who was worshipped with equal adoration by all the inhabitants of the Argolid. The Argives therefore contented themselves with dismantling only a very small part of the walls of the citadel, whilst they razed those of the lower city completely to the ground. [Sidenote: HOMERIC EPITHETS OF MYCENÆ.] Homer gives to Mycenæ the epithets of the "well-built city,"[163] "with broad streets,"[164] and "rich in gold."[165] The second of these epithets can only apply to the wide street which led from the Lions' Gate, along the ridge, through the enclosed town, to the bridge over the torrent of the ravine; for all the remaining part of the town as well as the suburb being on slopes, the other streets must have been more or less steep, and cannot have been alluded to by the epithet εἐρυάγυια. Regarding the third epithet πολύχρυσος, we have the great authority of Thucydides[166] that Mycenæ had immense wealth under the dominion of the Pelopids, for he says: "Pelops, having brought from Asia large treasures to the indigent people (of the peninsula), soon acquired great power, and, though a foreigner, he nevertheless gave his name to the country, and his descendants (the Pelopids, Atreus and Agamemnon) became still much more powerful." Thucydides adds that it appears to him "that the other Greeks joined Agamemnon's expedition to Troy less out of good will than from fear of his power; for not only did he himself bring the greatest contingent of ships, but he also gave ships to the Arcadians, as Homer says, if he can be considered a trustworthy witness. But in speaking of Agamemnon's inheritance of the sceptre, he says that he (Agamemnon) reigned over many islands and over the whole Argolid (πολλῇσιν νήσοισι καὶ ῎Αργεï παντὶ ἀνάσσειν); but as he