We have already seen in what manner Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelus, had usurped the inheritance which belonged of right to Hercules, as the legitimate representative of Perseus. Sthenelus had reserved Mycenæ and Tiryns for himself; but he had bestowed the neighbouring town of Midea on Atreus and Thyestes, the sons of Pelops, and uncles of Eurystheus. On the death of Hercules, Eurystheus pursued his orphan children from one place of refuge to another, until they found an asylum in Attica. Theseus refused to surrender them, and Eurystheus then invaded Attica in person; but his army was routed, and he himself slain by Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, in his flight through the isthmus. Atreus succeeded to the throne of his nephew, whose children had been all cut off in this disastrous expedition; and thus, when his sceptre descended to his son Agamemnon, it conveyed the sovereignty of an ample realm. While the house of Pelops was here enriched with the spoils of Hercules, it enjoyed the fruits of his triumphant valour in another quarter. He had bestowed Laconia on Tyndareus, the father of Helen; and when Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus, had been preferred to all the other suitors of this beautiful princess, Tyndareus resigned his dominions to his son-in-law. In the meanwhile a flourishing state had risen up on the eastern side of the Hellespont. Its capital, Troy, had been taken by Hercules, with the assistance of Telamon, son of Æacus, but had been restored to Priam, the son of its conquered king, Laomedon, who reigned there in peace and prosperity over a number of little tribes, until his son Paris, attracted to Laconia by the fame of Helen’s beauty, abused the hospitality of Menelaus by carrying off his queen in his absence. All the chiefs of Greece combined their forces, under the command of Agamemnon, to avenge this outrage, and sailed with a great armament to Troy.[c] Their enterprise, famous for all time as the Trojan War, stands quite by itself in interest and importance among the traditions of the Heroic Age, and demands exceptional treatment here. THE TROJAN WAR Historic criticism is almost a pendulum in its motion. Nowhere has this been more vividly seen than in the attitude of prominent historians toward the Trojan War and the poetical chronicle of it known as Homer’s _Iliad_. Scholarly belief has passed through all imaginable grades of opinion ranging between a flat denial that there was ever such a place as Troy, such a war as the Trojan, or such a man as Homer, to an acceptance of them all with an unquestioning credulity matching that of the early Greeks.