The Maiden Goddess Eos the Dawn, for much favoring Cephalos father Deion as a paragon of manhood, decided to incarnate herself in the body soul and innate talents of Skia of Aphidnai. So embodied she would patiently – and divinely! – intrigue at stalking Deion’s son, to partake his carnal comforts from his earliest manhood while she herself, by her realized mortal incarnation, would remain celibate as a priestess postulant. She thrived in East May Attica well-knowing Eos’ promise to her via “living dreams” of exaltation as a most graced supreme sister of the Maiden Goddess. Suggestive of earliest daytime after a sunrise, the cover at right of Book II, Cephalos Ward of Eleusis, depicts the sensational allure of Eos at self-exultation of her mortal body.
We have a sometimes sad boy Cephalos at the end of the 1390s. He’s deprived of his father Deion, awhile various major developments of great powers near neighboring Attica, as well as an oppressive internal transformation of unified Attica. Aktika, or the Lower Peninsula had conjoined to two matriarchal agronomies of the north mainland Greek Peninsula, wherefore the dynastic House of Erechtheus began under the branch royal Kekropids to become a very important regional Kingdom. At steering the fates impelling Attica’s brief Helladic Period great destiny the Kekropids, while a misnomer for filial descendents from Kekrops, composed the four sons of Pandion and the one son by his sister Herse. Pandion had been only a High Chief at sovereignty, and yet he was also a most exalted Consort Home Protector of the isthmian Ephyrea’s Alkathoos, his matrilocal homeland among the Saronic Gulf Rim Powers. Furthermore, he ruled over all the Isthmians obliquely, while at daily remove from Attica, he steered those rim powers and the isles within the Saronic Gulf as a shrewd inculcator of empowering aggrandizement of his sons. Towards the meritorious autonomies that Kekrops’ second generation descendants would realize, Pandion helped the general tranquility pervasive the lower north mainland. His younger brother-in-law (“marriage brother”), Cephalos’ father Deion, performed all the warring, bit mostly through defensive border diplomacy, excellent settlement of many nation races from further up the eastern north mainland. He protected the Maiden Heiresses of many manorial plantation governances upon the fertile MesoGaia, lying inland of the rim powers upon the Saronic Gulf and below the Eleutherais Woodlands buffering those coastal powers.
Important to have said in outset of our serialization about Cephalos, and of the most especial of the Kekropids, he alone by his lifetime elapsed achieved sensational autonomous powers as both a naval genius over shipworks, and as a “social industrializer,” whereat by both promotion and actualization of common folk persons of talent, inquisitiveness and earnest self-application a middling common folk just short of a bourgeoisie could become coastally extant during the 14th century BC. These included the lowliest self-sufficient populace(s) of artisan community relations to, albeit beneath governing aristocracies at strong alliances with each other. As his teenaged years of naval opportunities approached, his youth at fulfillment of important elders and highest born of realms, the so-called Esthloi (Worthies) were especially remarked as his most outstanding and appreciative beneficiaries from as early as his ninth year of age, 1380 BC. All his first cousins by his uncle Pallas’ many marriages nurtured him gladly at whatever they could sponsor to his gains for Attica through appeals to enterprising grown-ups who were ministers of royal courts or alike sovereign assemblies. He had the following of numerous second cousins, nearly his contemporaries of ages attained, by the prolific siring of his uncle-Pallas; These relatives, whom grandmother Metidusa had so generously kept close through alliances of great land stewarships and governances, composed the most meritorious generation which immediately followed Cephalos’ own, by his much older first cousins, (to which he himself we’ve proved the youngest born of true royal standing.
A middling level aristocrat or quasi-royal personage in myth, Cephalos has always a reminded me a bit about how the Bible cast Joseph to have become, a beloved youngest son of his father by the very many wives of his father’s nomadic seraglio. Also a precocious and most appealing lad, his ruthlessly envious brothers kidnapped and outcast him into slavery of Egypt, there to serve under their contemporary Pharaoh of Egypt who great queen he easily adulterated. Alike at appeal but unlike Josepha as loner and outcast, thus without any ruthlessly envious brothers, the Fates made sure against any possible repression or Cephalos, while also almost rendering impossible any thwart of admiring, boosting and sharing persons in his huge successes while only a boy, all as won by having won a culmination of selfless devotions to higher and lower “betters” wherever he advanced his years by numerous preoccupations and digressive circumstances of lifetime.
The Saronic Gulf Rim Powers. First Quarter of Fourteenth century BC:
My mapping of the coastal low mainland of the Greek Peninsula angles the future Peloponnesus broadside, as seen aerially from the east, even as it occludes East Bay Attica at below the Isthmus of Ephyrea at the bottom of the depiction. The lowest left quadrant, therefore, shows the Saronic Gulf Rim Powers and the small isles within its confines, at outlooks southward by the Peloponnesus’ several long peninsula promontories. That lower quadrant was Cephalos’ boyhood domain, whereby Cephalos had almost no consciousness of powerful near neighbors until his teenaged years. Regardless his being “so blinders on,” he was intimate with all maritime commerce under various incipient actualizations during the first half of the 14th century BC.
Note, too, the lower right quadrant that depicts the utmost fertility by the agronomy of Low Midlands Kadmeis of future Thebes. Relations to Alkathood, Eleusis and Attica were greatly fractious when Cephalos was born in 1389. Despite the excellent tilth of the MesoGaia, ( the spotty beige terrain of grain cultivation plain to see), Kadmeis sought o annex the Saronic Gulf rim powers, but always fitilely because of the great threats of invasion and incursion that lay northward of both Kadmeia and Attica.
The lifetime stories of Cephalos at the earliest shall bring him along the east coast of the Aegean Sea as enforced by many other images substantiating the genius behind many coastal ascendancies above Attica in particular.
The assumption of considerable walking diurnally greatly helps an understanding of youngsters by the very oldest times. A smart boy planned well ahead his daily means to attend closely upon his greatest interests as they arose or happened or opportuned him. Ship building, artisan enterprise, constructions and landscape developments, special projects enabling enhancements of farming and herding entailed whole days for Cephalos as unceasingly upon his feet. Cephalos didn’t like to be cloistered within Eleusis Sanctuary, and Deion helped him arrange those full and opportune days of special enterprises wherever their coastal and inland venues. The maps above depict easy distances between each other by boating, but it was mostly by walking that rather daunting distances made destinations useful to a lad’s preparations for adolescence.
At his ages of seven and eight years, during times when Deion was martially at field as a warden upon the borders, Cephalos made of close visits abroad whole day observations from which he derived an expertide for miniature modeling. While his father was away his boy systematized such layouts by components of meaningful enterprises, how they were conjoined and coordinated with each other withal their social industrialization. He’d gather up, carve or assemble tiny components of piecework representation of communal village layouts, and he’d then array them at the center of a seclusive promenade off his mother’s bed chamber and suite where there was just enough naked ground for intricately modeled assemblies. He’d make mock-ups of increasingly precise venues that he’d visit, and he was happy to explain them to him mother and the many high priestesses whose morning, evening and other regular promenades could learn what he’d rendered painstakingly. They were amused and appreciatively informed by the accuracy of his representations through simplest modeling techniques, making sense of minute venues and how they crammed together meaningfully as very many artisanal or building enterprisies — meticulously coordinated efforts as betwen themselves, whereby operated the diversified skills persons who performed so much actual industriousness that compelled him constantly new still-life representations.
Deion’s Good Parting Advice:
The father remained highly vigilant and astute about unwanted interferences in Cephalos boyhood. Deviant cult priests within the sanctuary of Eleusis proved foremost of vile ilks to be wary about, in part to another awareness of encroaching patriarchy at a bully dominance of Gulf Attica, Acte. Attesting his constant championship of female governance of long tradition, Deion’s more acute insights ranged into other unwanted developments, owing to Attica’s still fledgling unity. They bore threats to the branch royal Kekropids’s wives of greatest exaltation, for they all married well in keeping with the lapse of a female dynasty, the House of Aglauros. Their protector especially under title the Kerkyon of Eleusis, Deion’s powers of anticipation alerted the boy to a major change-up in nrorth mainland maritime and overland commerces of the Saronic Gulf Rim Power. Discerned as immanent a tranquility that might prove lasting after the removal of the Minyans by Aiakos for the sake of the Low Midlands. That much earlier establishment than Boeotia had most to do with trades and exchanges from overseas by caravan treks throughout the north mainland, most particularly along the breadth of Kadmeis, where a High Kingdom inland to the northwest between Phokis and Attica. Likewise a cooperative routing of overland commerce into the High Plains of Aioleis and Minya under a young and brilliant Great King.
Deion left his following of many champions at arms whose ages and stages in life meant them to retire into domesticity by lay down of arms. They needed succor and sponsorship, and n o laxity of attention upon their bold transitions into whole new ways of life. A little boy was confident in his father’s outlooks, also brave to forward them as bereft of paternal council. His cousins the Pelopids, besides his shrewd mother their aunt, was ready to bolster the stations of lowly men of great merit by tutelary, or protective habits for rural commonwealth agronomy. Cephalos proved an intermediary through the Lelegans, whose sponsorship over specific following of Deion proved most befitting. Yes, it must have seemed complex, and at first fragile. Buy the Restoration of the Kekropids, despite hesitant Gulf Atticans, was pervasively well-received. A happy accident was the death of Laios, an incompetent high king just as he’d proven as an embarrassing martial adjutant. What began as a herding of wild donkeys called onagers provided the beasts of burden for long caravan treks carrying multiple export goods from the Saronic Gulf into north south routes of regular transits. Brigandage might have been a problem but the sure footed caravansiers were warrior veterans who could handle such miscreants easily. Upon the shoreline landfalls themselves. moreover, he was proven an excellent supervisor of longshoremen put to the service of foreign merchants who needed through new acquaintance of newly maritime following whom the Lelegans could educate into numerous competencies. To the foreign merchants the opportunity to gain new outreach and deep interior inroads of their barter exchange was paralleled by coordinated social industry ingrained into Cephalos childhood.
Along the lines of steady progress at overland caravan trekking, there was also the greatest help on call at literate communication of numeracy that Cephalos learned and received from boys older only a few years older than him. They were under tutorials as heralds and couriers within the sanctuary confines of Eleusis, where a learning of what imperial Minoa had innovated of writ and numerate accounting by Linear A Cretan entablature seen at right. It notated drafted transactions of ambitious trade exchange, by which Cephalos could report to superior merchant sponsors such as his older first cousins. Such active record keeping along the Eleusis Sound prevailed as far as the Pyrhaios of Attica, a port where many off-ladings of ships became rapidly more frequent. Cephalos could insinuated himself into permanent merchant communities along the Isthmus where facility at numeracy was essential No matter that so much of it has yet to be decoded off wet clay tablets which have dried up and turned to dust since.
Undecoded Linear A entablature by scribes closely involved in the maritime
ambit of Crete Island. This writ has yet to become decoded for lack of finds,
but it infers to be transactional of barter exchange conducted
within important ports.
The litany of such burgeoning of specialist skills and the assiduous energies of artisanal classes and castes makes a tedious but necessary study. More interesting was ongoing building construction amidst active shipworks, where berthing or slipways for merchant class vessel buildouts. The Lelegans’ and Cephalos’ facilities at affording their superior sponsorships expertise arose through his own lofty superiors, a/o elder relatives and ministers of royal court, under Aigeus’ House of Erechtheus. Cephalos grew to have numerous ascendant outreaches going on all at once. Cephalos was never confused by any of it, and would prove the go-to-fellow that all superior relied upon. He knew how to be best informed, and he was actively inquisitive after new prowess to handle a multiplicity of landfalls, crossroad entrepots and overland trade caravansaries at coordinated conjunctions with each other. As he attained nine full years of progressing age, he was far in advance of almost all trekking charges and followers. His main challenge was to reckon with all the dull and average middle men who intruded upon his most reliable sponsors, while failing the highest communal standard of living for so many men and families by former warriors and sustainers of his fathewr Deion’s war years as a border warden. Only he could deftly adjust those veterans to family and social industrial orientations, their loyalties thus becoming steadfast even as they learned to rep[licate his proficiencies. Lelegan wives and grown busy children at landfalls of slipways were outstanding by proofs of how much they both liked Cephalos handling their husbands careers and commerce affairs, as well as grateful for shelter and common amenities to their sustenance. He affected subsidy of lodgings, cottage communities and the most overt amenities to social industry such as ovens, kilns, oxen yokes and heavy wheeled wagon portage. All his childhood modeling had him aware of the seemingly infinite necessities of dense social industry that spotted meaningfully along the Saronic Gulf’s coastal rim from Cape Sounion of Aktika to Argive ports beneath the towering Spider Mountain that formed the western horizon of the gulf .
Mature of mind and temperament, handsome and appealing to all shore denizens, and physically mature so seeming but not so necessarily so, Cephalos did whatever and however well, and he knew what his highest and lowest dependents needed to affect complex meritorious enterprise to requirements of merchant providers to all landfall entities at trrade distribution or import/export. Easily said but not done, of course, except that we must appreciate how highest born Cephalos was, how his daily associations purported, and how learned at coordinating highest and lowest echelons of diverse industrial practices, especially where ships, their landfalls and fastidious preparations for long cruising were so involved and greatly involving. His biggest problem was never developing following from elders and their children, but at cooridnating upon imposed functionaries whose seniorities could prove most interferring. He also could not become popular among them, because they reciprocated with envy and spite as he so apparently outclassed the. Genoius beneifits from modesty, but high intricate client relationships and requirements are not always for modest or submissive minds.
Herse and his cousins heard bruit of resentments from such underlings or working peers. As he frequented the east end of the Eleusis Sound where most active Attican ports contained within the vast strand of the then Pyrrhaios (later the Piraeus of Ancient Greece), he found the swarming commoners in service to Cretan Sea Lords to the the worst of the unmanageable. His mother was a paragon over all that Crete had of regular mainland presence througout the Saronic Gulf. These same sea lords very petty nobles very active at liaison with the royal court and senior ministries of realm. They thought hard to keep Cephalos in place, but also knew themselves circumvented by Aigeus and other family nobility of the House of Erechtheus. Non-dynasts vied with dynasts in support of all endeavors of realm, thus Cephalos’ popularity went to both antipodes of good working relations. Aigeus, we’re to learn slowly and yet well, had not the brilliance of his adopting father Pandion, aunt-Herse or half-brothers. The resentful turned the Regent against his foremost cousin despite his late wife Meta’s objections as conjoined with Herse’s. But she died and the second wife, a considerable land heiress Cassiope, was by Gulf Attican rural society and governance that bore envy and spite for the Kekropids, whom they deemed rivals by unfair preferment. Cephalos began to stand at epicenter when the Cretan Sea Lords sided with their toadies of royal court against him as well — with one glaring exception, most fortunately. This was a Cretan noble and governor over the Pyrrhaios, Erigeron, who also had his sister at highest place among Eleusis’ resident postulants of sanctuary. He was also most grateful to the Kekropids for providing his transient navy of Crete the manning of warship crews that fell short of full ship compliments by recruitment or press from the Mother Island.
Cephalos’ Brief Naval Service to the Cretans:
He connived to make welcome of Cephalos as a native Attican whom he could recruit and allow a special middling rank. Most appropriate to Cephalos’ thirteenth year as earliest a teenager, Erigeron groomed his services upon land to the Pyrrhaios as a facilitator of all kinds of needs not easily fetched up upon instant demand. Cephalos complied always; he proved dogged at doing so. So I skip over his years as a lad from ten to twelve, during which he became prominent upon all landfalls of frequent maritime commerce, even to a sponsor of shipbuilding of skiffs used as both fishing vessels to the handling of cast netting and passenger ferry service by crossings of longest spans of the Saronic Gulf. While a sideline under his most generous sponsors both relatives and closest peers of society, his designed skiffs were unique for both easy sailing and rowing by sweep oars. They were greatly admired crafts, and they became reliable at passenger conveyance, especially most skilled shipwrights and expert carpenters who were summoned as between ship-works’ sites for application of their considerable reputations. Alas, his impressive entrepreneurship drew ever more hostile enviousness between Cephalos and his mandatory peers or temporary “bosses.”
At thirteen, therefore, Cephalos had shipped out with ship supercargoes at short tramp shipping of goods outside the Saronic Gulf and by shuttling between the Mid Sea Isles “cyclopic” of the Greek Archipelago. He got his first sea legs going, and he learned important intermediary entrepots of trades exchange within such limited tramp cruising. He finally was allowed to ship out with Erigeron as a captain over a warship escort of the Cretans at sea service to the imperial Far Fleets of Crete. His middling rank was mindful of enlisted men and warrant officers of our modern navies to persons familiar with how large crews of able seamen aboard ships are supervised. So while Erigeron had mostly his command echelon to do with, Cephalos handled the needs and requirements of the crews drawn from career seamen and many able mariners from foreign culture such as the Lelegans upon all gulf and Cretan landfalls provided to the ambit of the great Mother Island.
Which has allowed me observe during Cephalos’ services to Erigeron how the Minos Lykastos in his last years of dotage conducted the Far Fleets as the superior to his only naval peer, his own son and heir apparent. We’ll know all too vaguely as the Great Minos after Lykastos died in late 1371 BC. For while the long aged and once brilliant Minos of Crete had lost touch with the conduct of that near peer’s naval service, he remained still a most popular paragon throughout the Saronic Gulf’s isles and Crete’s mainland feudatories, the rim powers including the Atticans so properly designated (over their historical great objections. Everybody served the Minos with utmost unction, respect and admiration, even as they knew that the imperial navies of roving Far Fleets were for a decade corrupted and recently become suborned into nigh piracy upon the mains and fareways of the fair voyaging seasons. Nobody dared show the least disrespect, but the Minos was missing out on completely on much more of nefarious activities within his imperial ambit such as his appointed occupational governors over feudatories of the far west, along the Cretan Sea running to Eastern Mediterranean and upon the White, or future Aegean Sea northerly above but inclusive of the Mid Sea Greek Archipelago in its entirety.
In less than three years Cephalos served Erigeron outstandingly. His crews enjoyed high morale between all echelons on onboard ship serves and their proficiencies at the billets of oarage and sailing handling proved likewise top rate. Erigeron was steadfast to have the Minos reliant upon his own appointed governorship, whether he was land based or active at sea duty. He laso knew the hazards of comporting to the dotage of the greatly aged Minos after his so many decades of famous naval concordats that had brought a once waning naval imperium of Crete under cartel of leading sea powers such as the Levantines of the Eastern Mediterreanean and the Egyptians of the Nile Delta, or Nilotis. His son and nearest naval peer was abusing his father’s increasing feebleness at delegating his imperial powers to his highest commands and many subordinates while at supervising a great maritime commercer ambit upon “the Great Green.” Erigeron knew of this increasing corruption even as he had no part in any of it. He simply could not stand to have his revered Minos slandered as so oblivious to the embarrassing conduct of his son, a man of great authority but contemptuous of the mainland feudatories of Greece, and of himself at a great age for any sea duty other that courtly great dealings at home of the Mother Island with like imperialists over seagoing trade cartels.
By long tradition, nonetheless, Lykastos had conducted the Imperial Games and Regatta from Ogygia, or tiny Delos Isle as known later, to which all his top commands and sea going feudatories were invited with great forcew upon attendance. Erigeron as governor by appointment of the great Cretan naval station over the Pyrrhaios was invited, and only one of a few fairly excused from attendance because of his shore duties or navarchy as a foremost anbd favored surrogate of his Minos. Erigeron, however, enjoyed sea duty and liked especially such service to the Minos as he’d performed in the past. Cephalos, his command echelons over him and his sailing and rowing crews under his active supervision wanted very much into the Games and Regatta held in 1374 BC. They commanded much readiness and fitness of preparations, but they also knew themselves competitive despite their war galley well past it best years when so many more recent would be competing at the Regatta. 
Erigeron knew how proud Lykastos was of his Far Fleets, but he feared any competition with his son over the Far Fleets less they be beaten by himself. He’d never live down the ire of becoming any kind of notoriety as a victor at the rowing race. And yet I put to sort shrift that conclusion to the Regatta without the fulsomeness of what I’ve written into Cephalos Ward of Eleusis, Book Two, (C. and the Kekropids). His war galley came in first to great lead, having prompted his fellow fuedatory navies to trail behind him but also far in advance than infit Far Fleet members who had greatly underestimated their preparations to compete tactically and magnificently. Erigeron had not done well in the land competitions and trials of high peerage ashore Ogygia afterwards, but he had not needed to. Lykastos was glowing with pride over a Cretan victor and well-pleased that the feudatories who had trialed the race winner had honored him with best prepared attendance. By contrast, his son felt humiliated, deservedly, and wasn’t going to let his sea lords at residence of the Pyrrhaios let him know the collective wrath. Erigeron cowered abjectly, gave all the credit to Cephalos son-of-Herse, a young mariner of most outstanding ways deep sea or ashore. Herse was very popular herself with Lyksatos, who soon gave bruit of her excellent on to all the other gorvernesses of realm within the Saronc Gulf and inland as major tribute payers to the light exaction that Lykastos levied from them.
Herse went into a panic over the news that so overtly credited Cephalos beyond his immature station; but she could not do anything more than take three decisive steps. She caused Cephalos to be discharged honorably (1) From further naval service to the Cretans. (2) She pleaded with Aigeus to ask the Minos Lykastos for a small flotilla of seaworthy warships that Cephalos might command as a near coastal navy, a protective cordon thus served that welcomed returning ships off overseas fareways into the Saronic Gulf while escorting important allied merchant shipping away from Greece and the Gulf to all and many far ambits. (3) While at that service he would serve ministry over the naval building for Attica, meager as it was, by launching both warship galleys and the ubiquitous round-hulls that translated as strongolies [STRONG-goal-ies] or merchant ships of large ladings. That third persuasion, however, had rival ministers tremendously upset over that grant of preferment, soon greatly pestering Aigeus, despite how amenably the Minos of Crete himself had approved of all three set-ups. Herse did not need any dissuasion, however, after Aigeus had a fit of impatience over constant complaints from unworthies of all sorts and standings against Cephalos. For once the oldest first cousin had a hissy-fit of a falling out with his virtual nephew, a youngest cousin most doting and loyal, by blaming him for the huge fracas despite the tiny granted navy of 25 war galleys. For a while he had proceeded well under three greatest friends called the Erechtheid Commanders, his nearest appointed subordinates at coast guard and all princes by other branch royal households of the dynastic House of Erechtheus. Herse had to realize that Cephalos should fare abroad for a year or two while the sudden breach with his liege sovereign could be soother, at least by her, as it did in fact and much more so withal a fine reconciliation of all brief grievances. But her mind made up, and by accident of a most fortuitous great idea that was put under her nose, Herse decided that Cephalos should go away and a-wooing of a foreign bride on offer to him for a brief consortship. She made him pack his stuff and leave the 25 war galleys to the protective coast guard while he was away. There was much weeping by all the friends he had within the sanctuary of Eleusis, many little maiden hearts especially broken that he was going away to become such as young consort for another worthy of his superb good looks.He immediately left thePrinces Erechthies behind his brief self-exile for Aigeus’ sake, but he had them his rovers and spies towards far advanced goals and opportunities that all the four late teenagers together had contemplated to build their lifetimes from.
At which point, just here, Cephalos’ stories resumes away from Attica, but not very far off, as an extended sojourn of newly liberated Magnesia from the Minyans……..
for R Bacon Whitney in pseudonym
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