Our five book serialization ended with a paramount biographical incident of Cephalos, a mostly expunged mythic personage or otherwise subject to the constant intellectual dishonesty of Classical Greek Mythology about him. To the Ancient Greeks he was either a pre-Hellene or early Greek patriarch and dynast, while living the Late Helladic Period of mainland Greece. The final incident cited was about his accidental manslaughter of his wife Prokris in 1360 BC. Treated as a major capital crime he was exiled from Attica with “all kith and kin,” essentially a relegation to oblivion. Both Thebes and the Ionian Isles, however, gave him a second long lifetime, almost a second creation within the Great Oral Tradition of purely recitative cultural legacy . Such were the Ancient Greeks’ resolves to end a most famous love story of Early Greek Mythology that their Athenians dismissed him summarily, advertantly quashing a most famous naval hero of their particular nation race. They did so for the sake of the heroics of Theseus, a mostly concocted superhero made up in the 6th century BC, despite his actual historical person finale as a terrible sovereign. There was besides, simultaneous to Theseus’ years of youth, another love story concerning Cephalos, which I bring out of its expunction a review here by utilizing the novel practices of the New Greek Mythology, to which I’m a recognized proponent. Through my means of honest restoration of his lifetime, the Saronic Gulf years of Cephalos as a teenager, I also accomplish a riddance of the long standing false duplication of Cephalos by his name as cited for his birth in Aeoleis. I must and shall insist here, in this Bardot Blog, that only a single Cephalos should survive robustly intact what Greek prehistory has so deliberately obfuscated, to great blame upon the Ancient Athenians for being so consistently ahistoric.
The Third Book of Cephalos Ward of Eleusis applies the New Greek Mythology to my corrected version
of Cephalos’ brief consortship with an utterly fictitious High Princess. She was supposed Klymene
daughter of the falsely eponymous Minyas, the supposed founder of the nation race of Minyans. He’s
supposed to have invaded northern Greece in the 15th century BC from Eurasia .
A few cardinal assertions come first for me to essay: The Ancient Greeks of Attica were forever loath to admit that their gulf region was feudatory (“under vassalage”) to imperial Crete. Regardless that they had to pay penance for the assassination of the Prince Minotaur Androgeos, the slain grandson of the pre-eminent Minos Lykastos, the only natural son as well of the “Great Minos” and his Euryanassa Pasiphaia. By almost all admissions of more ancient, much earlier Greeks, moreover, the Atticans were subjugated mainlanders since 1600 BC, and over that duration they were unstinting at highest honors put paid to Lykastos.He was held as a paramount Minos while he lived through Crete’s recovery from the volcanic eruption of Thera. What he wrought until his death in 1371 BC, however, fell objectively short of his honest goal of a complete recovery. Crete had to suffer as many other regions did a century and a half of eclipse of Imperial Minoa, by a created dynasty that must end despite Lykastos’ crowning support and imperial installation of Pelops, likely the most famous imperial exemplar of ascendant Argolis.
Alas, let’s not get into vague or hazy distractions that can unleash too many hounds upon the hunt for a Greece’s Late Helladic period as amost vanished away.
Allow instead three simultaneous developments which attended the decision of Herse to send Cephalos into courtship by the Trials-of-Bridal of a restored sixteen year old Princess of Magnesia. While we do not retain her grant name at birth, as declared by her mother Hebe, she was never named Klymene as the Ancient Greeks insist she had to have been. I’ve fetched up a toponymic name, therefore: Phima daughter-of-Hebe, by that mother’s subjection to an unwanted Minyan consort AKastos. She had long and popularly lived the queen of Magnesia, but deteriorated under conquest of the Minyans to leaving at last of life a princess heiress. Phima had to be briefly confiscate of kingdom, although it was half way to restored. The powers of guardian were given to her worhtless father’s custody after Aiakos’ systematic reconquests throughout the north Mainland, during which he accrued the dynastic Great Kingdom of Aeoleis and Minya. Phima was perforce become her father’s ward, based upon reasons of wardship wholly different from any others that had rendered Cephalos a ward and prince as soon as born to Eleusis, even if never to Attica. A final half of familial restoration to his contested bride Phima could only happen after her maturity and considerable royal standing reached at eighteen years old, two years afterwards her consortship with Cephalos was complete and terminated. For cutting explanations short as to why, the Ward of Eleusis was the foreign sired by a victorious courtier/suitor who must emerged from a mayhem on numerous misconducted tried ordeals, including major duels, proofs of many weapons by demonstrated prowess, and horseback competitions of wholly different prowess demanding a wield of a whole panoply of contemporary advanced weaponry. Emerge he did, and gloriously, especially considering his abilities as a man-of-arms had never before gone beyond any tested proficiency except for fighting haphazardly in melees against scroungy pirates, all of least mettle. His emergence as a hard winning victor had to have been most exciting, and yet that status was expunged along with the rest of his wholly self-made self. What should have thrilled all Atticans of his times, especially since he won as well many lucrative trade concessions for Aigeus awhile his sojourn as a matrilocal husband. Also reckoned for naught was what he had learned of training-at-arms from his father Deion, a most diverse champion by prowesses who his only son must summon in extremis and from whom to plead assistance in order to vie against a vastly superior ilk of rivals in an equestrian warrior caste that had overcome most all rivals amidst the north mainland Aeolians and Minyans.
All in all, the New Greek Mythology is a mythography of first ever writ about glories at individual combat that seemed predestined to become nullities….
A Preceding Incident Skia at Revery
Enough about all that. There is another preliminary to discuss, for happening in the course of Cephalos’ voyage up to Iolkos of Magnesia in the autumn of 1374. There he intended sojourn awhile he was in presence for lengthily conducted Trials-at-Bridal . His itinerary took him by Brauron Cove, where secret shipworks that he’d founded with three boon comrades. Arriving at low tide he had to anchor briefly below a high bluff of Brauron Inlet. And there, at the top of that height stood a maiden priestess, High Sister Skia recently promoted from postulance, who was relivingin transport of ecstasy a dream of ardor by the night past. It had been about a man promised her by Eos the Titaness Maiden of the Dawn, a tutelary, or protective deity by some kind of divine cast of lots. As she exalted in that promise of the young man, so deliciously provided her, so Cephalos had appeared as the very young teen-aged self of that person. He had to pilot his galley passed her to navigate deep water beginning just below the height of the bluff. There was love at first sight between them from short distance above and ahead of him, even if savored much too briefly for the promised ones, after an instance of protracted gazing upon each other during the passage by of his galley. He’d then had to move onward to his destination, albeit most reluctantly his further skippering of his well-outfitted oared vessel. He must pine as well for her over many years afterwards, because their actual pairing were predestined most belated through the machinations of her Titaness Eos. whose embodiment Skia could not know was herself a incarnate an immortal.
For they were within the many happenings that could occur within an Idyllic Age that most all later Greeks would relegate lost to mind and memory.
Herse’s marriage making for Cephalos just preceded the fact of a chosen girl become a novice, then a postulant and finally a most cherished Sister to a great teaching order of several holy sisterhoods, all congregated around the vast Brauron wetlands basin of East Bay Attica. Their sanctuaries and plantations thereto dedicated ringed the Basin at the end of the fertile MesoGaia which stretched from their a long way overland, then west and across the Isthmus to Sikyon upon the Great Gulf (of Korinth). There lay a prominent holy order as an oldest principate of the Argive House of Perseus & Andromeda. Vast plantations were all subsumed under the general name for Attica’s eastern MesoGaia: the Sanctuary of the Dawn, though, was by the grace and supposed founding of Cretans as a dedication to Eos the sunrise Maiden Daughter Day. A titaness, not strictly a goddess even as immortal, she was by Theia Blue Sky and and Hyperion, a titaness and titan respectively, of a genesis out of the Old and Ancient Beliefs in the Great Earth Mother. Even as a maiden goddess, I must add, Eos also owned a prominence as a trinity titaness, Daughter Day, that was much older and once co-equal to the Olympian Goddess Athena (whose form was a matron before she became a maiden goddess).
Eos had, from first sight of Deion as the roving Chief of Wardens above the MesoGaia, lusted upon every glimpse of him. Knowing any consummation impossible, she sought that consolation for long years ahead in his astonishingly handsome son Cephalos. Once he became a lad she had decided to mortally incarnate herself in order that a destiny between them become a splice in their skeins of Fates, whereby a long mortal life at incarnation could also be the splendor of his carnal comforts. For women by then were proving dotty over him, even if celibately. Furthermore, upon another vast plantation of the MesoGaia, which lay above Brauron’s so many, she found a body into which she might mortalize and invest her special divine gifts. She was the already extraordinarily beautiful daughter of Eioneda and Tricorythos, and a maiden heiress of great estate whom Deion had saved from a forced lengthy betrothal to the loathed progeny of the ruling Metionids. The mother Eioneda was a matriarch of governance over the Aphidnai Plantations of Attica’s land and sea border highest northeast. The manorial household lay upon the Bay of Myrtoa, surrounded by the lovely grassland the Marathon Plain; the dry forest woodlands and benchlands of grazing pastures within the Eleutherais Woodlands; and outlooks seaward over Abantis Island (later Euboea ).
Skia, a grant name at toddling age afforded a delightful daughter by her father Trycorythos, became inculcated by “her goddess” through living dreams. These had begun nightly when she was only ten years and already precocious and most difficult child for her mother Eioneda to grasp and account for. Possession of divine gifts to the pervasive stewardship over Aphidnai Plantation was too miraculous for her mother’s any comprehension. Once the child became invested with divine incarnation she told out all lessons from her goddess that propounded most amazing innovations of agronomy, whether of agriculture or livestock husbandry. Very meticulous at explanation, Skia had her own native talents for superb pedagogy through methods and programs that conceived massive land improvements. The final ordeal of Eioneda from her daughter, however, was that Skia bode aloud and loudly that she’d live her life away from her maiden age inheritances of Aphidnai, thus to thwart altogether what she honestly owed to her mother to become by succession. She musy sustain as governess the finest tenancies of humankind at husbandry and agriculture, particularly with respect to cattle ranching and all its related commerce throughout Attica. It is very tough to be succinct about all the ramifcations of thwarting her mother, but we should sympathize with the mother Eioneda that she must assimilate her daughter as suddenly divine of some aspect, and do so without any bitter grievance and stressed patience until the time her daughter abandoned her.
Fortunately her doting husband Tricorythos realized at the earliest how his daughter was become a prodigy by divine agency. Through his friendship with Deion, a constant visitor to the borders imposed by the Eleutherais Woodlands, he exacted the perfect advice of how to place Skia’s upbringing through her teenage years at Brauron, where the high sisterhoods schooled and finished maiden heiresses of the entire MesoGaia to a fitness and capablility to inherit their matrimonial landed legacies. Deion, besides a most welcome guest of Eioneda’s matron house (‘oikos), had a comely and lusty handmaiden to service his visits over his painful estrangement from Herse, his wife. And while at sojourn he could properly boast that he was the salvation of many high born maidens from ruthlessly imposed worst marriages, or even worse then that, prevent their lander inheritances from being confiscated by priesthoods and incompetent nobles by the bullying Metionids. Eioneda had first been married to such a worthless, even useless husband, and so a Bronze Age boarding school was easily rendered tempting by the savvy Tricorythos.
Deion finally guided the family down to Brauron Basin at a time of most oppressive climate at hovering over all the MesoGaia and Eleutherais Woodlands. He left the party of three at the parched orchards surrounding Brauron, where once profuse blossoms in springtime, the chosen season for the trek and first ever visit to the Sanctuary of the Dawn. The visitors found at the farthest eastern edge of the Great Land, upon Brauron Cove, the planatations so worn down by the third year drought that hung over Attica. All was and everyone was at stint, accordingly, althoughthe Supreme Sisters and their most gifted senior postulants of holy orders received Skia as best they could. Skia was as though a divine apparition of somebody most special to Brauron’s recovery. But first those sisters of highest authority practiced constraint to allow Skia playmate novice and youngest postulants to attend upon her visiting explorations. Meanwhile, the holy authorities could quiz her parents, whom they received with another form of special unction that the governess Eioneda must expect as her due. Skia back from play with new friends was then invited into the conference to have her father Tricorythos explain her immense gifts. He described all themany and greatest outcomes for Aphidnai’s vast and complex land stewardship that had come via Skia’s so-called “living dreams.” He , of coure, had utmost credibility by the wayt his delight in his daughter made her nigh fabulous self seem astonishingly true.
At first the supreme authorities had to assume that the girl nigh maiden was gifted, perhaps greatly heightend as prophetic, despite Skia’s insistence that she knew most absolutely that she was not. Al;l that she was became of her goddess the Titaness of Living Dreams retained from her heavenly observances of human capabilities and capacities while driving before sunrises her chariot bearing the urn of Dew summers and for sprinkling wintertime Frost. For Eos’ awareness of the entire world arose from being driven across the daily courses of her steeds Phaiton and Lampos who broad reveal of all manners of newly brilliant human activity upon the surface of the Earth. Too, she was meticulously conversant with all state-of-the-arts newly practiced because the Titaness had taught her to retain all her learned acuities. They were, plain to tell, most advanced and advancing by human kind alone, as even the Titaness admitted of what she could not teach from her lovely head.
Astonished, the attentive listeners were seeping tears of utter gladness at consuming the girl’s insights into her most generous and favoring goddess. They beheld her a boon which they dared not challenge, or not until Skia had passed two years of residency schooling before committing herself to holy orders — while shuttling between homeland Aphidnaia and Brauron Basin should home sickness prove too much for an underaged novice to order . While that advice startled mother Eioneda into most violent protest, which only her husband could sooth and coax her out of, the several highest sisters confessed to the parents that their daughter, regardless her birth from an ennobled human womb of a secular matriarch, was all per se a divine incarnation, a harbinger of the Goddess Eos’ mortal revelation and her sometime clear choices of who most special must embody her for a lifetime of happy immanence so long as the incarnated choice would live. Even Eioneda and Tricorythos could not help being smote aghast that a Titaness had come alive and really tutelary as a most special boon to all subject deemed at last resorts from withering blight off the diurnal heavens.
The two years were conceded to the Sanctuary for Skia’s schooling, even though she already had imparted most convincingly much good advice to Brauron’s highest holy authorities. How to mitigate, for instance, the immense and most worrisome oppression of drought upon all of East Bay Attica that still lay prospectively ahead. According to what Skia had told her little hostess novices and postulants, though, all her advice told out over the brief visit were about creating new channels of irrigation, building earthworks from high terrain for reservoirs and backwash lagoons as methodologically supportive of whole new tiny hamlets as tillage that would range the dried out immense basin of utter aridity. For it sprawled as desolation over all of the lowest terrain of Brauron. In fact, Brauron was mainly a winter season basin of many sinks for runoff of rains by huge watershed most everywhere surrounding the landlocked Basin, whereby it became most uselessly soggy wetlands — except, that is for drainage from high terrain field and hilly pasture layouts of very long traditions of cultivation. So, Skia started off from scratch as somebody nearly impossible to believe, except for the keen sense of all adults at hallowed residency that she was indubitably the Goddess Eos, and as much so revealed for what she represented of the Great Goddess’ physical world most everywhere a great landedness below the sidereal heavens. Cryptic advisories as Skia’s might seem, by the end of the assessment period of two years, when then Skia had a choice to stay or go home, the entire populace of Brauron were without any hesitance to accept her credibility about all she’d taught and how exacted precisely when implemented or carefully installed.
For by then summer rains arrived just as Skia’s first advisories against erosive effects by runoff had been installed and the channeling implemented as effective. That fully rainy autumn was spent at defiing and suring up small reservoir cachements, in particular for back water by the damming of brooks and rills overrunning off saturated land into blockades to retain backwashing overruns. The heavens then began to deluge in earnest, until mitigation of flooding become a totally dominating priority. Skia had taught how to divert such inundation into Brauron Basin proper, and once collecting there nigh to flooding, she had taught how instead to articulate flood as delineated meres, shallow ponds, and fended plots ( a/o fends per se). Orchards on slopes were pruned down to the bare minimum green wood of main boughs composing fruit trees, until they had seemed starkly dead, only to “releaf” until wind blown leafy just as winter arrived for them to retreat perforce into dormancy; the next year had all fruit trees late flowering and greening but likewise most profuse in new growth off barest green wood. The tenant keepers of terraced orchards discerned and conserved all these happening most observantly. Blossoms had appeared late, Yes, almost worrisome tardy, Yes, but they filled all boughs and festooning new branching at last, too. The result was an emergence of well-formed fruit by most gradual earliest appearances, and yet the trees easily sustained temselves so prolific and robust of fruit without any culling until harvest time had become an exacting necessity. Concomitantly, all terraces, fields and pastures greened up very well despite the continuing rain showers by thunderstorms until the autumnal equinox. And while that earlier greatest harvest time of summer solstice had that first trial year remained lean, the summer planted crops afterwards brought to the garnerings made up for the shortfall.
The next autumn brought serious rain deluge to worry everybody grievously anew. But winter improvements by further earth-working of conduits, ditches and reticulated irrigation managed rain containment and repressed erosion, slumps and landslides off slopes. All of the Brauron hung on against another last deluge as though comforting hands of hidden overseers lay upon all tenants, working novices and sisters to help them at their guidance by Skia’ directives. That second springtime proved a season of early rain abatement, however, because two months just past as the vernal equinox had been sunny overcast. That had assisted soil retainage while preventing wilting dry sunshine. Indeed and then in fact, the greatest extents of orchards and low terrain under tilth used that new prolonged visitation of dry climate to show up later as high yielding by contour plowing and embanking of crop rows, while the wetlands still remained a muck of exposed mud flats. None of these outcomes were familiar to the oldest tenants, but they could hardly resent that obedience to novel directives were hurting their livelihoods or recognized expertise.
That lowest country of all terrain became Skia’s summer project to closely supervise under the guidance of her goddess. As the land readily absorbed healthy doses of rainfall into late winter, the basin was reworked and plotted for layouts of gradual seepage off ponds and meres, so that all new rains drained to the northeast and through a natural sluice into Brauron Cove and Inlet. And yet the new dams and overflow retainage caches which encircled the edge of the Basin made useful small creek and brook headwaters by rills that guided their excess run-off into the newly prepared conduits throughout the lowest levels of the Basin. Such crops as were best as “wet of feet” such as flax, an earliest cultivar of wild rice and other watery legumes (such as the cresses} grew well until became bountifully flourishing. It all seemed so astonishingly antipitatory, wise and practical that even the oldest of tenants and groundsmen of the Plantations could adjudge the empirical results as the best possible, and exactly for what Skia and her Titaness intended. The time for Skia to return home to Aphidnai and rejoice her parents was celebrated with festivals of thanksgiving and ended with propitiation of much more from the global omni-observances of Eos the Dawn Goddess. Skia was especially glad to renew her father’s spirits of greatest confidence in her; and for once her mother chucked in her any last reeservations and invited Skia to replicate all that she ‘d done for Brauron by replication for Aphidnai’s many and much different layouts of needed land preparations and improvements.
Most of innovations brought Brauron’s rural populace to strenuous labors and very wearying outcomes wrought daily were proving entirely satisfactory regardless slowness to happy outcomes. Stress abated into a doggedness to aggressively proceed with novel dictates over the different climate and rainfall conditions next presented. Skia decided upon Brauron for residency to complete her schooling for a finishing to rejoin her mother until her age eighteen. I skip over that period, however, because of, or until, another irrevocable decision that newly beloved Brauron must impose upon her for a lifetime calling into holy orders. That was her obedience to the Titaness despite the deferment unimplied in a promise of a prticular man whom she saw in living dream at actual advent to Brauron. Not that first time in revery upon a bluff of overlook to sea and far off Abantis Island, but immediate to the Basin by what he’d build around the Inlet that bled its seepage into the shallow Cove. Thus, at nearly nineteen year celibate, he had appeared as worth a great waiting over more years ahead, after his lifetime brief hiatus at Magnesia, where he could build towards his own promise, that of a naval genius and royal navarcy over all that was launched in representation of the Saronic Gulf Rim Powers.
Brauron at flood leveling everywhere, here is Skia’s tracery of containment berms that prevented erosive overflows.
Onward to Magnesia
Iolkos was a portside of summertime palace compound to which Phima, the princess on offer to courtiers, owed to her late mother Hebe. She’d been a little girl there until her father had flaunted the petty royal marriage to bed a slut of barest eligibility to sit with royal company. It was not the famous point of embarkation down Pagasai Bay by Jason at adventure to seek and find the Golden Fleece. Aeoleis had not yet a navy to countenance any crossing of the Aegean Sea, the inland waterway and small sea Propontis through the Bosporos to cross the Euxine Sea. It was not his fault that he had to be a fraud, practice many deceits and fail all his quests. The Ancient Greeks invented a great sea adventure under the supposed numinence of the Olympian Pantheon that id not yet exist except for much less revered precursors. In fact, all that Iolkos became navally became of Cephalos as typicall the great presence in the middle of highest and lowest people to him he could prove himself a primary benefactor. Book Three’s cover announces him by its subtitle, Prince Consort of Magnesia, an accession he won from his consortship with Phima, who he raised from high to nigh highest of all princesses in liege to Great King Aiakos.
Of all her suitors he was the most shunned as foreign, even by his intended bride who felt insulted by the youngest of the consort aspirants who view for her. Even as stunned by his startling great looks at first fleeting meeting, she fooled herself that he was too low for her. She did not meet her obligations to host her courtiers at Iolkos, or at Sesklo where the horse competitions were held and where he began to climb to foremost in her estimation. He had to exercise himself hard to a fitness to meet all trials except those requiring equestrian mettle, bravery and ruthless competence. Unknowing that the princess repaired to the parade concourses every day, just as he did by jogging back and forth from Iolkos, she only paid first attentions to him in secret, while peeking at his rush of practice seat-at-Horse under the training of her lowliest indigenous subjects, the Pony Men called the Didimoi, who were in fellowship with other diminutive nation races under deep subjugation such as the trodden plains Amazons and alpine ranging Centaurs of oldest mythic imaginations. Phima espied sneakily how rapid his aptitude for horsemanship, and how well he assimilated the martial qualities at fighting while riding mostly bareback upon superbly bred stallions. She quietly offered him a well-disciplined (by her) troika of stallions in peevish delight that they would likely kill him before he tamed them to fighting artistry by deft maneuvers. Cephalos conditioned himself marvelously because he was idled at doing naught else while spurned by king Akastos and his mean queen consort Chryseis, a typical wicked stepmother irked by envy for the bride. The Didimoi found his retired father for him under Mount Ossa, and drew him down to his son, obeying his summons to render his capacities for dueling to best efforts adequacy to fight Aeolian, Minyan and other rivals of pagan immigrant nativities who had been allowed amnesty to settle around and within the North Plains of the riverine dominance of the Peneios River.
Deion became much more than he’d been, a rescuer of maidens from shame, infamy and humiliation while a champion-at-arms for ennobled and royal women. He was famous, of course, for having drubbed the warrior sires of the twelve other consort aspirants for Phima at marriage. But most of those superiors were much lesser civilized, virtuously blessed or nobly attained than the leading men most favored by the unwillingly absent Aiakos. That peerage of ministerial ilks was eager to know Cephalos and his constant coterie of naval friends who visited him at Iolkos awhile he was a-wooing. The uncle of Phima, Eriginos, the lauded king of Orchomenoi over the Lake Midlands, had cozened him north from his mother Herse, persuading her that her young son stood apt for courtship of his beloved but oversexed niece, who had great need of a savior from her shameful flirtatious ways and feckless, ultimately doomed ways at embarrassing herself before highest peerage and royalty. Eriginos was her volunteered protector, but what she needed was youth and vigor and charis (utter selflessness) of a man contesting in her behalf while questing after her future great needs to excel at sovereignty in her own rights. Evening and early night confabs between many important commerce leaders, enjoined by other minisaterial appointees of Aiakos, learned Cephalos’ commercial objectives as a winning consort, which were mostly to do with developing the entire Strait of Abantis with well-equipped havens for the rest and maintenance of Round-Hull crews, whose merchants’ whole fleets would thereby compose an ambitious maritime commerce. All his aims to solicit these illustrious men became clear, and then reciprocal to whatever Cephalos could offer upon his return to Attica. From there the visiting boon friends, the three Princes Erechtheid, served Cephalos navy sufficient to prospect all the best sites for building landfalls and havens along the Strait. There was only the brief time of last dusk and early nighttime to affect the many concordats cumulatively achieved. Deion and Eriginos proved prime catalysts to prepatory endeavors for all of them, but Cephalos proved an outstanding closer as a negotiating intermediary.
The Trials-at-Bridal, by contrast to such smooth coordination, proved a mess and mayhem of inept officialdom. At judging the string of daily competitions over most of two fortnights, there were arose deep biases towards a greatly favored peerage of Minyan Horse and young master-at-Horse. Cephalos made only one friend from his rivals, Trachis, who exposed the worst judges by choice and in representation of the fiendish step-mother Chryseis; she, it became clear, would wreck any happiness for her proud and naive princess step-daughter. So incompetent were the presiding officials that they blithely exposed the rival consort aspirants to most lethal rules of challenge. While supposed inadvertent at doing so, Cephalos found himself in duels verging upon hazards most deadly; exposed to ordeals at wield of weapons that could cripple or maim young men for life; and subjected to to suddenly contrived rules of competition, the last and most celebrated one in particular. Piecemeal by every trial they’d wreck fair chances of his becoming overall victor. Cephalos did better than middling at weaponry despite his lesser size and physical maturity, and regardless that he could not wield his own weapon of expertise, a Levantine long dueling axe and hook which could cleave armor and shields while also tearing away an opponent’s grip upon his own chosen weapon. Cephalos rankked nearly to highest at proficiency of combat where both opponents must wield identical weapons such as sword, dirks wielded two-handed and spear dueling and casting. That ranking showed Deion’s keen instruction. Then, in four match-offs of horse duels, each contrived to bring Cephalos against a clearly supposed superior, he killed two rivals while offering most accidental finesse at defense; he toppled five rivals by putting his own fierce stallion mounts in turns against his opponents; and finally he killed at tactical offense a most determined assailant, whose arrogance and overconfid-ence exposed him to Cephalos’ hurl of his axe. That last breach of rules, supposedly just barely licit, had the presiding officials determined to disqualify him. But the nearness of the suspenseful last challenge on offer dissuaded them, deciding them instead to let Cephalos suffer humiliation over a timed long circuit of a chariot obstacle course. Each rival must pair with royal equerries, but pairing with the Didimoi in order to drive his own chariot while he met all obstacles prsesented was denied Cephalos, The Pony Men were too low of caste, and Cephalos too foreign and audaciously parvenu.
So, the morning of that last ordeal of a set course of targets , all which had to be smitten from a wheeling chariot that must neither course too fast or too slow came, brought to great spectacle and huge attendance the paired chariot teams. Cephalos at last desperate chance had gone to the palace compound to seek the bride on offer out the previous evening. He plead her assistance and skills upon the reins to succor his desperate need of a driver of his cart; because he was denied any equerry under the peer pressure which frightened all of them away. She had insulted him for killing his rivals and endangering permanently the horses of his opponents, and either most grievously. But she would spurn any denial to a consort aspirant of Pony Men as suitable equerry for driving a cart. Fair of mind about what was blatantly fair rulings, Phima also knew why he had to have been reckless, and why his explanations squared well with the truths that she would elicit perforce by her goading from him. He took on her rebuffs measure for measure by riposting. Later, she would say that she couldn’t deflect or quash his immense effect upon her, even as they argued to harshest points asserted against each other back and forth. She wilted from a strongest lust and sense his allure , and had to surrender to his request at last, never ever afterwards to her any regret that he’d cajoled her so persistently.
And so that next day when they competed as a pairing upon the timed race concourse, for a meandering and much looping circuit race timed to an elapsing flame of a lamp held by a presiding judge, they composed most lovely couple together at standing behind the apron of their chariot cart. Her uncle-Eriginos openly wept in rapture for her sight, her most obviously splendid attempt at highest majesty that might be affected for her that day in honor to her late and lovely mother, another finest equestrienne. The Didimoi had prepared his cart in an ideal manner for his fetching arrows from quivers both sides of the apron enclosure, and for many small javelins drawn from sheaves that hung high off the back of the chariot. They proceeded into the concourse and charged to proceed, Phima kept even speed and pace of the three gifted stallions, at glide solely by her own deftness upon the reins, as the cart passed targets of bow and others for impalement by spears. They were many by staggerings apart, and the stress of holding the reins deftly while “gentle-ing” the flow of her driving became nigh overwhelming of Phima stamina and doggedness. Still, she shouted out oncoming targets astutely. Cephalos’ constancy at aim was keen and true, and that brought them both a sudden surprise. For every early target that was smitten by arrow or spear, it was moved hastily down the concourse of racing to be presented yet again for a second try. The rules of the race, therefore, went against his superior rivals who were faster at the reins but aimless by constantly being thrown of targets by the bouncing terrain or overly veering of carts. So the count of well-won targets by Cephalos not only invigorated Phima to especial stamina at her own sustained prowess, but their show allowed him to daunt all at spectacle into repression of their worst felt biases. For the great attendance proved unanimous at the couples’ winning of aimful score, until her uncle-Erginos and Phima could hug together with great shared grief over her glory so fulfilling of her late mother, his sister. Weeping loudly and proudly, Cephalos joined in their embrace to cheers of the many surrounding Pony Men who knew so well the manifest tributes that Cephalos owed them and would subsequently bring to proofs.
The Two Years of Princely Consortship:
Having expunged to full removal a second Cephalos from from the supposed Late Helladic Period of early Greece, the New Greek Mythology also dispenses with Apollonios of Rhodes Hellenistic Age Saga about Jason & Medeia and the Quest for the Golden Fleece by the Argonauts. There was no Haemonia where Jason’s family was installed; Iolkos was not yet a portside township for any substantive navy of Magnesia or the Great Kingdom and dynasty of Aiakos son of Aegina by some assignation connived by Zeus. Now that Cephalos has sojourned in supposed Haemonia and enjoyed lodgings for his courtship of Phima at Iolkos, bot places must hereon be identified with his deserved restoration and the great ascendancy that he brought home as fully underway after hos almost two years of consortship and princedom by Phima Princess of Magnesia by Hebe. That has to be the reckoning of the Great Oral Tradition of Early Greek Mythology, and no writ by Classical and later ages mythography can stand as legitimate, especially any by the supposed master work The Argonautica. And yet Cephalos will forghe a prehistory about the north mainland that renders Iolkos, Sesklo and High Pherai the beginnings of their true legacies to the Greeks of Classical Greek Mythology.
All of Cephalos’ sojourn and tenure of consortship fails to fully render him illustrative, because both lifetime milestones also began his fullest discretion about himself, his covert dealing outside of Attica at major trade diplomacy, and foremost and in particular his careful non-existence as Navarch of Attica (admiral) and all the other Saronic Rim Powers. As he left for Iolkos he had only twelve ships of an important warship class of galley by debut of the Second Era of Great Oared Vessels. While he was at sojourn for courtship, his falling out with Aigeus was wholly repaired and the master development plan, to have 75 great galleys launched including those twelve had become a resurrected aborted building project. The program called for a new major shipworks to be located at Brauron Cove and Inlet, under the management of the three boon friends the Princes Erechtheid. Out of that venue in formal debut, kept mostly out of sight or concern of the sisterly High Orders of the Sanctuary of [Eos Titaness of the Dawn], was spawned an elite Triakonter class of warship galley numbering to 225 warships by 1365 BC. Considering how advanced the class was from inception, and how evolved so masterfully and innovatively over all successive launches off the slipways, speaks hereon to two main facts about the Second Era of Great Oared Vessels now introduced. First, Cephalos was their Navarch and First Minister of all Saronic Gulf Navies brought to therir shores of retreat; his role was courtly, bureaucratic and deftly coordinate of sponsorships earned from richest and highest echelon persons, including the MesoGaia’s hierarchic matriarchates which provided raw materials and onboard live stores sustenance for all warships impending to long periods of active duty. The recruitment of his early following proved elitely and diversely artisinal of town communities, but supervised royally by his maturing generation after fledgling and apprenticeship standings of his second cousins. Operational sea duty and deep sea deployment, by contrast — and here I state with utmost emphasis — Cephalos delegated to commanders and skippers, whereby all voyaging, cruising, convoying and conditioning of fleets for major sea battles. Overseas encounters to the Princes Erechtheid required the allegiances of the Lelegans and other maritime nation races wo regarded Cephalos alone paramount, but the the lifetime record has Cephalos predominantly at strategic planning, and yet the Prince Erechtheid were counterpart of roles to his as the most active duty Commodores over distinct Far Fleets, even a fourth Home Fleet ported at the Pyrrhaios by way of conducting diplomacy and trade liaison with the resident Sea Lords off Cretre Island who stationed imperial far fleets along Pyrrhaios Strand (at just outside of Eleusis Sound). I shall try to be meticulous to bring these clarity of contrasting command echelons at home with contextual demands that were seemingly complex or deliberately obfuscated to quash unwanted curiosities. I hope to guarantee a special clarity of exposition over the two decades 1370-1361 and 1360 to 1350, awhile the deft operations coordinated for Cephalos away from the his shipworks and fleet buildouts within the Saronic Gulf, along Brauron Cove and, at last, within the Bay of Alykai of Thebes.
The High Prince Consort and Co-Regent with Phima High Princess of Magnesia
Typical of covert methodologies and perfectly maintained discretion within the north mainland, king Eriginos , Great King Aiakos and all first Ministers or War, their remained the pretense that Phima had not achieved her ascendancy to Queen of Magnesia — that she was maintained as a Princess just as she was reckoned by her parents Aiakos and the consort Chryseis. Cephalos, that is, was always most apparently subordinate to her, even as he had full control over all strategic planning to elevate her security and secure Magnesia as a very important Kingdom, even if not aspiration as a High Kingdom such as Aeoleis and Minya were. and a confederacy of petty kingdoms (e.g., Orchomenos) became after his consortship was over. The main reason for the complete subordination as clearly apparent was the nature of a limited wedlock by the sacrament of marriage. Cephalos subjected himself to a short term marriage in order that he might resume his pledge fealty as a liege Kekropid to Aigeus. And yet all diplomacy affected with the above principal sovereigns had him a close peer to their courts, even Aiakos’ Great Court, so that all start-up enterprises were coordinate endeavors all realms participant.
This might seem that Cephalos somehow held himself at arms length from a true wife which Phima so greatly wanted to be. What was beseeming, however, was not so; Cephlaos exuded affection for her, bearing a highest standard of what a consort for a supreme matriarch attain if fact, which is to say, always ready, always potent and able and exceedingly satisfactory at quenching the ardor of his first and foremost mistress. After the last day of the Trials-of-Bridal, all officaldom was dismissed and completely unwanted and unnecessary. Nefarious surrogates of Akastos and Chryseis were made to disappear and totally unwanted. Phime demands of ardor were well attested as nymphomaniacal from her first try of him. She screamed her heat, demanded long twilights if not every twilight before sunrise to quench herself at feeling impassioned anew; and all she had to do was disrobe, and he’d be at cover of her naked on the couch at any time the rest of the day. Both partners were greatly commended for their stamina on the couch, to the delight, I feel obliged to add, of their many servants of household and honor entourage at court.
He was careful as well that she not be hurt socially, for her father was pestered by her step-mother to shun her. Because Akastos was so indolent about his sovereign duties, and Chryseis so self-centered and jealous over a sensational passion, Cephalos imposed himself as an aloof first minister while brooking no objections from persons of high peerage who imposed themselves irregularly. He proved as great a teacher as an ardent consort. They operated at befitting roles, both together or respectively, but always out of Iolkos: They were mostly accessible at a lodge high up upon Mount Pelion. not too far from the alpine campus which the later Cheiron of Magnesia founded for his famous school at arms and the teaching of war medicine and field surgery. The Portside Iolkos was fully nascent as the primary harbor upon Pagasai Bay for the Great Kingdom’s navies, where the capital seat of Magnesian navy and merchant marine performed navarchy for the entire Strait of Abantis. Together at High Pherai summers and less frequently at Sesklo during winters. Cephalos’ many nights at parlay steered his daytime preoccupations, which were construction and realty developments to develop landfalls outfitted for layovers of merchant marine and the hosting of foreign navies. They did not bother with insults cast against them for ignoring her parents’ court, which they knew as a frivolous and indolent uselessness.
He was very careful to curtail voyaging or deep sea excursions while Phima was pregnant. Upon the birth of their son, whose name was cast away with his expunction by the Ancient Greeks, they conditioned themselves at horsemanship and association with the Pony People who so delighted in their immanant and as yet future queen. The Cheiron matriculated under her and her taken husband for life, afterwards the acquitted consortship. All in all, Cephalos nurtured her outgoing nature and sociability, what we call a common touch. That rendered her self-confident and self-actualized at her royal attainments and accomplishments. She joined him on all his nearby voyaging whereby she knew his boon friends from Attica well, and they most willingly knowing of her solid ascendancy which Cephalos seemed to instill in all royal persons of far more years than he had. Phereklos would become her foremost liaison as his working associations as a ship builder and horse transport designer for Aiakos attested numerous cooperative enterprises with Eriginos of Orchomenos and the Great King when holding court in presence at Phthyia, Aiakos naval capital at the low country end of the Sperchios River Valley. There Phima could befriend Endeis, who took title of Great Queen, even as she comported herself at a most becoming modesty for being born that way as an Isthmian Maiden Heiress on considerable landedness.
Cephalos and Phereklos encouraged each other to bold seafaring eastward via the Dardanos Strait that wends along Troias of the Anatol and across the later MesaPontos that achieves the Bosporos channel entry into the Euxine Sea. [In order of their later names, they were the Hellespont, Ilion and City Troy, the Propontis and the Black Sea.] Phereklos was Levantine by his mother’s lineage, although he was a prince of the House of Erechtheus by an obscure branch royal house that dwelt Salamis Island. That Prince Erechtheid and Nval Commander had a nose for opportune sea faring, and he would lead Cephalos on a cruise with Phima. They would visit in orderly outreach the Upper Sporades Isles, a chain that “walked” ships above the Mid-Channel Drift for crossings eastward to Anatolia, while taking it westward on strong assisting currents by main of return. That first voyage attained the Bosporos where a colony of grain merchants active at faring mass exports of grain off the debouches of four main rivers of Eurasia (The Danube, Dnister, Bug, Dneiper, as most famously spelt]. They made a Great Grain Convoy of grain export distributed throughout the Greek Archipelago, where they were constantly urged to create entrepots for yet more voluminous redistribution to both mainland divisions of the Greek Peninsula. The way they meant to strategize would win a great export trade by assembling convoys to run down next along Anatolia and into the Mid Sea or Cyclades Isles, via bearings on variously on point from the west. They greatly wanted best entrepots possible to disable Cretan grain monopolies. Their redistribution would deplete stocks by running during last fortnights of summers up the Greek Peninsula. The grain stocks while depleting, the fleet of barges was wasted, their merchant skippers frustrated at another bold scheme, to transform the huge grain hulks into horse transports for the shore to shore staggered export of finest horses bred by the Kadmeians, Aeolians and the Minyans. For such trade, the so-called North Rim Sea, in part to the Greater White Sea as the Levantines and Cretans were want to name it, was amassing mares-in-foal and yearling stallions that were competitive, even to being in highest demand, at being covered or covering breedstock of Troias and the vast horse ranches of the Imperial Hatti within the Haly River Basin of interior Anatolia.
Accordingly, there was much to parlay with the colonists of the Bosporos, by way of strategic master planning of two vast transport trades that would both begin and end the long fair voyaging seasons of the Aegean a/o White Sea. Phereklos proved ingenious at conveying how full conversions of bulk grain holds would allow their superior reliability to transport Horse across the North Rim Sea and onward to the Bosporos during autumns and onsets of winters. Cephalos would provide swift and maneuverable galleys of a class entirely superior over the Cretans as a safe escorting navy provisional from the Saronic Gulf and the Strait of Abantis. By his means of reliable security the early Greeks could win major apportionment of the last stocks available to grain distribution by late springtime and earliest summer convoying of Phereklos. That Prince Erechtheid would re-outfit the grain hulks and barges for horse transports which he would build over many years for Great King Aiakos’ two High Kingdoms of Aeoleis & Minya. The earned apportionments of grains for import inland of the Greek Peninsula would be three in number, for Attica, for the Istrhmus of Ephyrea as a mainland entrepot and for the Great Kingdom’s coastal kingdoms upon the Strait of Abantis as far as Pagasai Bay. The scheme was by no means tentative, but the build-out and implementation of the convoys and their shipping required a new conference with the colonists of the Bosporos. It occurred as Cephalos’ and Phereklos’ great feat accomplished through the young Attican class of Triakonters, some 75 ships in number as finally built and launched of the slipways.
Cephalos, however, curtailed his contribution to long negotiations with the House of Tros, to enable fromal grant of safe passage of grains running down the Dardanos Strait at beginning of fair voyaging seasons, and for convoying horse export transports over their terminating months. So Peherklos voyaged with the colonists back to their homelands where the grains originated from either storage of or massive garnerings as freshly harvested “winter wheats.” That allowed Phima to earn the credit of final apportionments to her Magnesia as a high royal bargain that might and must reward greatly her uncle-Eriginos and the younf Great King Aiakos. It also was one of Cephalos’ last great benefices to his adoring wife before their consort expired and he must repair to a career under preparation as his own along the Saronic Gulf Rim of the north mainland Greek Peninsula.
By then, of course, Phima wanted Cephalos in life marriage, which meant he must remarry her to attain their matrilocal marriage together. That was impossible from agreed outset, as between the formal arrangements made by king Eriginos and the Diomeda Herse. Eriginos had to have warned Herse that her Cephalos’ as a most welcome consort fulfilling of the ardent and hady youth of his niece was his only objective to fulfill. To attempt a lifetime marriage requiredd he live with Phima in Magnesia, at royal court yet to be built and established as ministries for him to direct or render stewardship. The betrothal unto such a long marriage woud require far more severe trials-at-bridal, which even Phima would not countenance. From a naive and feisty maiden Phima had become far more sophisticated under Cephalos’ apt tutelages, this mature and smart enough to know their Fates spliced short and tight but not ever so enduringly as a lifetime marriage secured by progeny under a female dynasty that mother Hebe had been queen and heiress to. The sad realizations that she could not retain the man whom she was so much in love with took eighteen to twenty six month according to two versions of the how the happiest of consortships was ended. I think that Cephalos was gallant to afford Phima the longer term, while the shorter term supposedly obtained only because Hesre had arranged a stupendous marriage bargain for him as a consort High Prince, by a most advantageous wedlock if any that could be secured from his homelands as a one and only betrothal bargain.
As I have reckoned the difference of eight months as a matter of further duration of the consortship, it was mostly spent upon another voyage to the Bosporos, with only two more months of passionate adoration between the young royal couple afterwards. Phima could not attend the second long cruise eastward whereas it was an absolute necessity that Cephalos and Phereklos bond to together on final arrangements for either annual or biennial Great Grain Convoys, by alternately shared responsibilities to Attica and Magnesia (as feudatory to the Great Kingdom) as soon as convoy fleets could be assembled. The voyage was a complete success through compacts of barges sent down from rivers of the Rus, progenitors of the Ukrainians. The colony of the Bosporos would control all barge dispersals down the Dardanos Strait. all as expeditied by strong overflowing current by flood spates filling the Euxine Sea as though a small lake. Cephalos’ or Phereklos’ convoy fleets would receive them offshore Imbros Island by expediting the dispersal and distribution of heavy hulks and barges down the west coast Interior Passage of Anatolia. By then 32 warships could serve safe galley escort for the whole scheme to proceed.
By the time he returned to Phima in agony of her non-requited passions for him, they wound up the consortship with great flourish, having endowed Phima with many scattered benefices through Magnesia’s granted naval and marine heritage of his founding, even if ostensibly for the sake of Aiakos as much as for her. He also left her pregnant and comforted, even if sorrowful for her many epiphanies by him which left her unmarried for almost eighteen years.
Cephalos sought the high sister upon her perch of bluff outside of Brauron Cove, hoping that he might splice their destinies together. But that was completely quashed by the titelary Titaness Eos herself. She was not ready forfietiness and carnal indulgence with her choice of mortal for her incarnation through Skia. By contrast, she was showing herself full of zeal at making Brauron Cove an Idyl of agronomic stewardship and livestock husbandry within the continuing Idyllic Age that was, in fact even if still only theorized, the closing warming period of an intergalacial floruit which would mean chill and blight over Eurasia from 1125 to 825 BC.
for R Bacon Whitney, Publisher of Bardot Books
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