TIRYNS, an ancient city of Argolis, in the Peloponnesus, situated in 37' 40' N. list., 41' 1' E. long., on a low flat rocky hill which rises out of the level plain, at no great distance from the head of the Argolie Bay. According to an ancient tradition related by Strabo it was built by Preetus, an ancient king of Argolis, who in the construction of the citadel employed masons from Lycia, who wore called Cyclopes. The Greeks attributed most architectural works which were characterised by rude masaiveuess and great antiquity to the Cyclopes, and such works were consequently described as Cyclopean. Homer (' ii. 559) calla Tiryns the ' walled,' or perhaps the ' well-walled' Tiryns : and Pausatiian (ii. 25), 1000 pearls after him, thus describes the remains as they existed in the second century of our era :—" The wall of the fortification, which still remains, is the work of the Cyclopes, and is built of unwrought stones, so large that not even the leant of them could be even moved by a pair of mules. The intervals between them have been long since filled up with smaller stones, so as to make the whole mass solid and compact." The entire circuit of the walls still remains more or less preserved. Some of the masses of the stone are shaped by art, some of them are rectangular; but these are probably repairs, and not a part of the original work described by Pausaniaa. The finest specimens of the Cyclopean masonry are near the remains of the eastern gate, where a ramp, supported by a wall of the same kind, leads up to the gate. On one side of this gateway Colonel Leake measured a stone of 10.6 by by 3.6. Hero tho wall is 244 feet in thickness ; in other parts from 20 to 23 feet.
The fortress, or citadel of Tiryns appears to have consisted of an upper and a lower incloeure of nearly equal dimensions, with an inter mediate platform. The southern entrance led, by an ascent to tho left, to the upper level, and by a direct passage between the upper inclosure and the eastern wall of the fortress into the lower inclosure, having also a branch to the left into the middle platform, the entrance into which last was nearly opposite to the easteru gate already de scribed. Thera was also n postern on the western Bide. In the
eastern, as well as in the southern wall, there were galleries in the body of the wall of singular construction, the angle of the roof being formed by merely eloping the courses of the masonry. In the eastern wall there are two parallel passages, of which the outer has six recesses in the exterior wall. Of the upper inclosure very little remains. The fortress itself is only a third of a mile in circumference, so that in all probability it must have been no more than the citadel of the Tirynthii, the town itself being situated in a plain of 200 or 300 yards in breadth, on the south-west of the fortress : beyond this plain lies a marsh, extending a mile farther towards the sea.
Preetus, the reputed founder of Tiryns, was succeeded by his son Megapenthee, who is said to have trausferred it to Perseus. Perseus transmitted it to his descendant Electryon, whose daughter Alcmene married Amphitryon. The latter prince was expelled from Tiryne by Sthenelus, king of Argos ; but his son Hercules recovered his inherit sum and was in consequence called Tirynthius. (Diodorus, iv. 10; Pinder, Olymp.,' x. 87.) From Perseus to Amphitryon, Tiryna was a dependency of Mycenas. At the time of the Trojan war it seems to have been anbject to the of Argos. ('Iliad,' ii. 559.) Sub. sequently it was partially destroyed by the Argivea, perhaps about B.C. 468. The Tirynthian citadel was called Licymnia, from Licym nius, a son of Electryon, and brother of Alcmene. (Pinder, Olymp.,' vii. 49.) (Leake, Morea ; Cramer, Greece; Gell, Itinerary of the Mores and Argolis ; Dodwell, Classical Tour.)