Cephalos, the Ward of Eleusis - S. W. Bardot

Cephalos, the Ward of Eleusis (eBook)

Books I-III

S. W. Bardot (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
687 Seiten
Small Batch Books (Verlag)
978-1-951568-17-7 (ISBN)

Cephalos, the Ward of Eleusis, is a five-book volume of translations of the Archival Chronicles of Mentör, son of Alkimos (born in 1285 BC). An artist at the contemporary writ by syllabaries, his composed literary style of protohistory renders the earliest Greek regions as first known and termed in accordance with their royal dynasties. By the end of the five books, such histories by entablature, beginning with the grandparents of Cephalos and continuing through his parents' ascendancies, have related his own great rise, spanning from 1380 to 1362 BC.

Cephalos was a very late patriarch within a well-arrived age of illustrious mythic personages. They had real biographies, although Cephalos' has suffered mostly expunction by Classical Greek Mythology. He and other founders of "e;Houses"e; ruled within the Late Aegean Bronze Age, their realms at domination of both seas and mainland divisions that compose the Greek Peninsula. By this serialization, Cephalos becomes paramount for an earliest formative coalition of small navies that centered around earliest Greece's Saronic Gulf. Here we have a half century of his ascendancy within those Rim Powers from his birthplace in Eleusis, even as he's twice born royal by his Attican-born mother, Hers the acceded Diomeda, or High Princess, over Eleusis Sanctuary. She's also a greatly landed governess from her illustrious mother, Metiadusa. The Rim Powers of Cephalos' greatest intimacy were the Upper Isthmus, the three united parts of Attica, Salamis, and Aegina Islands. The parents of Cephalos influenced this shoreline coalescence by accepting and settling the turmoil and influx of many displaced persons from the north mainland, by movements of Aeolians and Aeolidans that characterized all his boyhood years at the beginning of the fourteenth century BC. Book I, Prelude to a Naval Genius, stages off Cephalos' mother, Hers and off his father, Deion, a martial-at-arms most capable of imbuing his son with the broad tactical repertoire he exercised at overland warfare and by dueling in melee. Throughout Cephalos' boyhood and early teenage years, his parents and extended royal family offer him ample resources and collaborations that would enable skilled artisan colleagues and ennobled comrades their own career ascendancies. Increasingly men nearest his age, they coalesce into the covert and compelling coalitions that bring the last ever imperial Minos over Crete to utter ruin. Book II, Cephalos and the Kekropids, brings us to Cephalos' teenage years, the 1370s BC, when his naval initiatives can confidently progress through the extensive peace and prosperity that his father, Deion, has created for all of the north mainland. There is a juggernaut of prodigious feats by Cephalos as he develops overland commerce by caravans and is assigned a gamut of shore offices and commands. This Third Archival Chronicle also introduces Skia of Aphidnai, the mortal incarnation of eos the Goddess of the Dawn, and Cephalos' greatest love. Book III, The Consort Prince of Magnesia, picks up in Cephalos' mid- to late teenage years, as he is establishing a coherent war navy and pursing maritime objectives for Attica. An invitation to court from the Princess of Magnesia can win him further naval advancements if he can outlast more mature rivals at feats of horse and chariot, dueling, and other physical ordeals.

CHAPTER TWO

THE FATHER DEION

Deion, the paleopatËr’s father, was born in the recently oppressed land of Dauleis. That small region lay west of the Lake Midlands, the heartland of later Boeotia and central Greece. Its western hillocks and winding vales lay separate from both the High Kingdom of Kadmeis (a precursor to Thebes) and Orchomenos, whose western verge of fertile basin drains into Lake Kopais.

Deion became an itinerant man-at-arms as soon as he’d achieved proficiency. He became expert at light skirmishing by tactics of swift maneuver and covert strategy in hilly woodland warfare. He resettled first near Phokis, where he proved his prowess to the High Matriarch there, Lebadia (from whom an important plain later took its name). Her realm, despite its autonomy, was then a loyal protectorate of the High Kingdom of Kadmeis. At any call to arms from that quarter, she enjoined Deion’s caste of men-at-arms to Kadmeis’. For her fidelity to their imperious warrior ilk she won spoils’ apportionments off the High King Labdakos’ gains from warfare.

His realm, however, can be defined by reference to certain complications that attended his accession to power.

Many small but successful farming communities composed Dauleis together with her near neighbors. They had no matron plantation tradition such as Mentör would have known by that idiom. They were easily protected by small force, or they were easily recomposed after a few stray trespassers might trammel them. Quickly passed rampages made for resilience in the Dauleian people, and created a proclivity in her young men toward a proficiency at some weapon of choice.

Despite that resilience, the hit-and-miss tradition of intermittent wars had to end. Deion’s home community became utterly defenseless against new settlers who arrived as whole migrant families under belligerent clan leaders. The nomadic ways of their amalgamated tribes were too often in pursuit of permanent conquest. Formidable waves of conquerors, the equestrian champion Minyans paramount over all, were driving the established indigenes out of the north central mainland of the Greek Peninsula, compelling those clan leaders to render their people subjugate to conquests for permanent territorial gains.

The first waves of incursion had enjoined the displaced to inhabitants of the Upper Midlands, pushing the settled Aeolidans out of their transitory settlements after an earlier vast dislocation from Plains Aeoleis of the Great Peneios River Basin. Once the new settlers arrived, moreover, the Midlands showed fatal weakness as a fragmented region of disunited matriarchates. For whatever features any of those small lands had not yet offered before, for permanent occupation by much earlier bullies, suited those newest trespassers of horse, cart, and highest equestrian caste very well.

They found the Midlands identical to their own stolen homelands in the far north and northeast of the Euxine Sea. What had served cattle well beforetimes served even better for horse pasture and the breeding of war steeds for chariots. The Aeolidans must bemoan a second displacement after a first by their earlier invaders, the main waves of Aeolians, who suddenly suffered very much the same plight of forced flight southward. Second time and first time displaced settlers became a newly amalgamated people, nonetheless, and by including in their refugee migrations the Oechalians, a people masterful as archers and sling-spearmen, they conquered north mainland territory inland of the Saronic Gulf and above the Isthmus of Ephyrëa.

After the Minyans had conquered Orchomenos and the Lake Midlands, the flux of newly constituent neighbors became the happy inhabitants of the Asopos River Valley. Initially they squatted amongst the meek and wholly unhappy subjects of a Meda, or High Matron, Aegina. It was deemed her ill fate that she had attained that status so young, as barely a nubile Maiden Heiress to her mother’s realm. Fortunate, therefore, that her very fertile land required a dense population to realize its best potential as a commonwealth agronomy. The interlopers contributed strong means to a restoration of whatever the native rustics had briefly forfeited to them perforce, as they shed their patriarchal and nomadic legacies in exchange for the prosperous and traditional coexistence beholden to, thus in fealty to, Aegina. That prosperity accomplished, the great potential of the land released, word passed northward about what they’d found in Aegina’s and other southern matriarchal regimes. That word included how very vulnerable were the native inhabitants. The Aeolian race flooded into the Low Midlands, pushing their own kindred Aeolidans down upon the Isthmus that divides the Greek Peninsula.

The enormous influx of conquerors also smothered Dauleis with “Horse-tamers.” Doughty men-at-arms such as Deion must soon have sensed the futility of holding any sustained muster against intruders of elite equestrian caste. The Dauleians had to suffer droves of squatters, and make do with a new existence as a native ethnic minority. Hardly alone in such vulnerable circumstances, Deion left his homeland in order to find himself a new land and a more promising liege sovereign.

He was typical of his caste in that quest for a powerful patron such as Labdakos. The days of stalwart martial champions under the landed governesses were fading away. His own caste had usually joined communally with the manorial plantation societies, with the status of occasional armed retainers. The sovereign champion for the women of the manorial societies was usually a co-regent, her “Consort Home Protector”—sometimes an uncle, oftentimes a father, most often a husband and the sire of a landed governess’s several offspring. Such men were barely higher in rank and status than the ilk into which Deion was born. Each lowly master-at-arms spent his life in wait for whatever combat he, a steadfast minion, must perform as champion of some exalted maiden. Leisure, preparedness at arms, and the perpetual restlessness from keeping quiet a violent nature, attended the aspiring champion-at-arms until the next summons into battle.

Mentör then expounds:

Deion was atypical in that he showed an early ability to invent combat tactics particular to whatever special warfare came to hand. He was also distinctive in eschewing the hauteur and dullard’s lack of curiosity that so typifies the armed retainer. To his enduring good fortune, he never was too overly beholden to his sovereign liege’s genius-at-arms. Instead, and here all my sources remark upon him with emphasis, Deion was independent-minded, to the ultimate benefit of both his High Matron Lebadia and her assertive patron overlord, the High King Labdakos. He was highly respected for his self-initiative. And he was capable of great generosity to the meek and defenseless dependents of his lieges. In all this he was helped by a handsome physique, a certain braggart gallantry, and a pleasant disposition toward his fellow man.

Somehow he sparked special recognition from his fellow masters-at-arms. Upon the ferocious advent of the Minyans, who were driving the Plains Aeolians down upon the Oechalians and kindred Aeolidans, Deion made a broad recruitment from the entire scramble. Rallying his distressed peers of caste and ilk, he had them retreat south as an elite force, abiding there briefly in the hope of finding that perfect sovereign liege who could retain their band as a true standing army. He intended to lead each young man he recruited to champion ranking while they progressed together through their inspirited youth.

Deion’s elite force acquitted itself with excellence for Lebadia, who was suffering the backlash of the newly oppressed and displaced Aeolians. Next he exceeded himself for Labdakos. Several fierce campaigns against the rampaging Minyans, drawn down by an alliance with barely subdued Orchomenoi directly against Force Labdakos, convinced the High King of Deion’s genius as a martial-at-arms while only a yeoman war leader.

While Labdakos tangled with the Minyan subjugated Orchomenoi, Deion took the bigger fight by leaps and dodges across country, his maneuvers ever northward of the Lake Midlands. He centered his first campaign along the alpine ridge of Mount Orthys, a small mountain range between the Upper Midlands and the Great Peneios River Basin. Gaining an overlook of the latter by the passes from the south into its lowlands, he carried his force across ideal chariot warfare terrain. Having hurdled unhorsed border provocateurs out of Haemonia, a small kingdom below the skirts of Mount Pelion, he invaded where the real enemy resided—the newly conquered territory of loosely settled Plains Minyans. His engagements there led to a temporary repulse of their entire invading force. Then, reversing his assaults, he rubbed out the most recent braggart conquerors of the Upper Midlands.

Still, a single genius at his kind of light-armed tactics couldn’t do all that a warfare of repulse required. An onrush of dashing charioteers trampled the gently sloped lowland below the Sperchios River. Their maneuvers culminated in a late campaign’s feint, as though to surround Labdakos’ rear guard. His supposed support of Deion, at his far vanguard in the north, failed because the High King withdrew to...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.4.2022
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
ISBN-10	1-951568-17-6 / 1951568176
ISBN-13	978-1-951568-17-7 / 9781951568177

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