BB’23:6 A Naval Ascendancy & 1368 BC Take Out of the Cretan Sea Lords

This review diverts us away from prehistory of Attica during the enlightening reign of Aigeus and Medeia. His consort Queen has made a great story of a young and assertive woman, but you’ll have to read Book Four of our serialization to know why. That’s an exciting reinterpretation of the great force and sovereign abilities which she brought to a man whom she truly loved, but like all the men in her youth, he was too docile a person, a man of little assertion, or expansionist vision or strategic acumen. Medeia was doomed several times in her youth, only to be dismayed by the incompetence of her supposedly brilliant father Aietes,  by the incompetence of her adventurous husband Jason — despite his overwhelming sex appeal and magnetism to powerful women who would reign or asserted themselves her rivals. Great woman such as Medeia who ruled selflessly and only co-regently with their monarchic husbands typified the 14th century BC. Her father, whom her  mother Idyia greatly exceeded in royal status, denied their daughters the matriarchate inherited from her status of First estate within the Isthmua of Ephyrea.

In Brief about Medeia:

That considerable demesnes located the high yielding forests of the Lower Isthmus of Ephyrea. From where later Korinthos (Corinth) would take name during the Greek Dark Age, from the 12th century BC, ff. and the ensuant Iron Age, from the 10th century BC, ff., Idyia had loved Medeia’s father Aietes so greatly,  such that she put such stweardship aside to follow and nurture his mercantile genius  at far northwest of the Adriatic Sea, along the Eridanos River Valley of the Italian Peninsula for its plentiful rare resources both importable and exportable. There was no Dragon on guard for Aietes over a treasure trove that the famous Golden Fleece rendered so salutary. No Colchis, either,  upon the Euxine or Black Sea; no sudden visitation of a ship of glorified adventurers led by far the least man among them, as certifiably a famous crew of paragon heroes by the assessment of the Hellenistic Aghe Greeks. The ship called the Argo landed within the broad debouch of the Later Po River,  having learned that the deltaic outflow of the much earlier Eridanos downstreamed readily ferrous ores. Jason soon snowed the young Medeia, playing off the opportunity of her much wanted fulfillment of her late mother’s promise to her before she died. That assurance, broken instead by her father, was the considerable landedness of her Isthmian female forbears. He asked, but did not demand in return of her restored hallowed landedness, that she support his restoration to a  stolen princedom from his father Aeson. Presumed by Ancient Greeks to have been located within Pagasai Bay of Bronze Age Magnesia, we actually cannot know the landed patrimony of Jason for sure. He claimed it was by a usurpation of his uncle Pelias. Medeia astutely listened, and then devised that they should together steal her away from her father, and having voyaged south then east at evasion of Aietes, they should realize their first landfall wherever the realm of the uncle Pelias situated. That was the ploy, and one assumed most hazardous, because Pelias was most definitely to prove a legitimate king, who had not usurped as much as he’d overcome the weak claim rights to sovereignty by his brother Aeson.

Also, by the time of travel from the Eridanos River to whatever putative homeland of Jason’s royal claim rights, she’d found him weak, injudicious and, therefore, incapable of any likelihood to overcome Pelias through his crew of formidable warrior mariners. [Likely they had deserted his leadership for lack of any faith in him or his character]. That is why I skip over any of the mythography by review instead that that’s properly expository of how Medeia realized a violent murder of Pelias by inveigling the hands of his own docile daughters into complicity with her home cooked usurpation. They were cozened to artfully to roast away his old age by bathing him in a stew pot whose heat he could withstand. That’s the supposed inveigle that a Hellenistic Age epic poet explains of how Jason was enthroned as a petty king. As soon as his accession, it seems, so too his final and honest realization that Medeia had restored him to nothing of any royal aggrandizement, especially by comparison to the vast plantation landedness of the Lower Isthmus such as Medeia sought of her own personal and rightfully hallowed  restoration to her motherland via assertion of her matrimonial (maternal) landedness. For not only was it immediately discovered that Medeia’s claimed inheritance from Idyia were entirely valid, by mere presentation of herself with able proxies to the high city AcroKorinth, but Medeia next learned how her father’s marriage to Idyia had created for her  estate the  seashore landfalls of several rich merchant harbors and their manufactories for exports into the Great Gulf (of Korinth) and the martime world beyond its far outlet.  Thence, through her nephews by a sister Chalkiope and her husband Phrixos, had become during her youth the great merchants and intelligence at trades lying far west. Thereto, via itineraries of trade access stepwise proceeding up and along the Adriatic Sea, lay rich repositories of metals, exotic livestock (sheep of a most bounteous prized fleece and aboriginal bisons, oxen like, called Aurochs). There, too,  mineral and vegetative resources of highest value were imported by caravans from the Baltic Sea of Hyperborea, such as amber, amethysts and the unknown hardwoods of finest quality that covered such finds of most popular gems.

Besides all that, Jason was appalled and easily chastised by the hideous murder that his brilliant wife had perpetrated for his own sake. He could not live with the demeaning consequences, and he didn’t have to. Because he had no trouble with forfeiting his restored patrimony by using his sex appeal for a new life and new  woman above the Lower Isthmus, where he was immediately possessed of highest estate by Medeia’s meteoric rise to most special paramountcies of land stewardship. For she had so readily quitclaimed her inheritances from her mother, whereby  greatly accomplished land stewardships were nurtured to burgeon and bounty. The final gist of all else that summed up about Medeia — and excusing again that I skip over her attainments so readily — Medeia soon established her Isthmian lifetime as a supreme land governess most worthy of highest exaltation and broad emulation by the Isthmian womanhood of Ephyrea as a whole populace. Accordingly, she had taken supreme seat of the AckroKorinth as principal leader over High Matrons of both secular establishment and over just as many rural High Sisterhoods over counterpart agronomic demesnes. Medeia, therefore, was early to establish herself a paragon  to exceed all  known alive the early 14th century BC for an utmost economic paramountcy over most grateful Ephyreans.

Book Four of the Serialization of Cephalos offers the academic expository fiction which introduces Medeia at her highest Isthmian ascendancy. Not that all her gains of landedness and highest prestige as a maritime supremacy were  well-fated to prove lasting: Jason continued to prove an utmost disappointment to Medeia and the endearing children whom she bore to him awhile all her attainments and accomplishments. [Those children may have numbered to three, but possibly they were five newborns close apart as each conceived.] She was such an eager mother by way to preoccupy her attentions in far better ways that those of devotion to a promiscuous husband that she became unconscious of the immense covet that motivate powerful enemies against her. Jason also was the most envious of her, and his resentments were readily exploited by Kadmeians north of the Isthmus who would make him their dupe. Her easy superiority at all matters realized during her maternal years of childbearing, Jason began in earnest to intrigue with vile and selfish men alike himself against his hallowed wife.

The Marital Concordat between Aigeus and Medeia:

As Book Four begins, Cephalos had returned from Magnesia at fine acquittal of a pre-agreed brief consortship. Howsoever sad for his princess bride to lose him, he took up a new marriage as a consort High Prince of Attica as beholden his dynastic female superior, Prokris heiress to the Aglaurid dynastic legacies and also highest esteemed as direct off the paternal lineage of Erechtheus, for whom Kekrops had named his “patriarchal dynastic” House of Erechtheus at the end of the 15th century BC. Coincidental to Cephaos’ return to matchmaking mother Herse were two major developments abroad of Attica while he’d been absent in consortship at Magnesia. First, the long reigning and most popular Minos of Crete, Lykastos, had died. So long had been his dotage that much of his accomplished resurgency of imperial Crete was underway a rapid decadence by corruption within the Mother Island ruled under the sacral majesty of the imperial Euryanassa (Greek’s close approximation of the name/title Empress). In fact, the awful reputation of Lykastos’ successor was at rapid bruit and rumor as Cephalos was duly informed by his first cousins at vice-regencies and many other stalwart followings who had prospered while he’d been away.

Secondly, Aigeus, two times a widower by the loss of two wives that rendered him exalted status as a Regent Custodian (but only a High Chieftain by royal parity), had taken a consort mistress who was proving instantly sensational at guiding his custodial realm’s ascendancy in part to the prosperity of all the Saronic Gulf Rim Powers. Their adoration of each other had them conceiving a prince and heir, whereby, Aigeus upon marrying his mistress for much wanted legitimacy, baby prince Medeios made his father King of Attica at full exaltation meant by the royal title. Mother Herse added to a whole triumph of status by the branch royal Kekropids through another contributing factoid. Cephalos’ marriage to Prokris attained for their High Princedom together a royal standing just junior to Aigeus and Medeia as together foreign born sovereigns by the restorative resurgence that brother Pandion had enabled over the earlier decade just ended, the 1380s BC. Cephalos, moreover, was about to learn from his strong and enabling contacts throughout the Isthmus of Ephyrea that the consort mistress was, indeed, Medeia, the famous Supreme Sister of the high city AcroKorinth. She had been caused to flee her rich maternal legacies after putting down single-handedly a vilely concerted conspiracy of Jason, a new father-in-law, the Kreon of Kadmeis, and his daughter Glauke who would have Jason remarried to herself after many years of their enjoyable adultery. All those principals to the conspiracy had been quashed, and only Jason a sole survivor (even as thoroughly ruined), because Medeia had killed their children together to enable a clean get away from her most violent reversals of her enemies by a most loyal Isthmian following of Upper Ephyrea (Ephyrea Pleione).

No sooner than the arranged marriage of Prokris with Cephalos and their realized comptability with each other than a distinguished delegation arrived to the high city Kekropia of Athens in representation of the AcroKorinth of Ephyrea and the Isthmians. They asasert themselve newly wise about Medeia’s quash of the great conspiracy that rid them of Jason and other traitorous miscreants, and, too, they are prostate with humilation that they’d be useless at helping her avert total disaster for the beloved homeland. They proceed to explain about their utter ignorance of her astute machinations to save the Isthmian Nation race (genos), but also why it was completely impossible for them to discover all the covert secrets that Medeia so astutely uncovered single-handedly. So the mission of the delegation was to plead fore atonement by full atonement of Medeia that her escape from her murders of her children all kith and kin except for Medeia herself has her fully restored to all that she had and what further had prospered since her flight from Ephyrea. How all of this hard work of the visiting delegation works out is my masterpiece of academic expository fiction in fulfillment of the New Greek Mythology that delivers a clean slate of absolute righteousness for Medeia, explaining why none of the deities — titans and titanesses, gods and goddesses — new brought any retribution upon her fro all the murders she committed since becoming a nubile maiden and thereonthat condition to a humbled consort genius, mother of an heir apparent, and co-regent genius at enabling her lover, now husband and king., Aigeus of the branch royal Kekropids by the House of Erechtheus.

All such developments should have daunted Cephalos, but they don’t. Because he has his own ingenious machinations and manipulations, howsoever kept secret ever since he crewed for a warship of the Cretans under the command of a new boon Cretan friend, Erigeron, appointed resident governor over the sea lords of the Pyrrhaios upon Eleusis Sound. They attest to his naval genius as an orchestrator of a novel navy wrought by Lelegan shipwrights everywhere dispersed the Saronic Gulf shoreline of Rim Power, and for three years newly installed in concealment behind Brauron Cove and Inlet of East Bay Attica’s coastline upon the White Sea, much later the Aegean Sea, under Crete’s imperial hegemonies as a bully sea empire coming to precipitous decline by Lykastos’s son and heir, the Great Minos of the House of Minos. For The Ancient Greeks might deny forever that they were subservient feudatories to Crete since 1800 BC (at the latest), their true forbears had been proud of their allegienaces to Lykastos and all his own ancestors’ endeavors to unify them in to naval transquility ever since the 1450 BC overrun of Crete by so-called Mycenaeans off the Greek Peninsula and by Karians off Anatolia whom the hatti Empire called Millawandans. Besides the apparency of is naval genius through ship building of 75 Triakonter Class War Galleys since 1372 BC, along with all fleet compliments performing at logistics, Cephalos has made clear how respectable his gifts of strategic planning were by secret mobilizations of multi-generational followings throughout the north mainland. And while gone to Magnesia, he has allowed his boon friends the autonomy to become master tacticians over deep sea deployments of 25 war galleys apportioned to each of the Princes Erechtheid — Phaiax, Phereklos and Nausithoos.

Prokris was soon astonished by her much younger husband by observing his obvious gifts of land stewardship learned from service to his grandmother Metidusa and Herse, even as he took over anew the required administration and reforms of her Aglaurid estates upon Attica’s Low Peninsula, aka Aktika. But ignoring all that resurgence of his Saronic Gulf lifetime, Cephalos had the secretive humility and charis (selfless generosity of his person) to earn highest royal favors from Aigeus and Medeia. The two royal marriages, of Kingdom and Dynasty, and of High Princedom and domestic vice-regencies stood to elevate Attica most considerably. For the quasi-imperial High Kingdom of Kadmeis and the imperial confiliations of Great King Aiakos and his empress Endeis owed their considereable overland commerce by caravans and inland distribution of foreign imports to the lowly followings which Cephalos had created at earliest age through the sponsorship and mature sovereignty of his own branch royal mother and first cousins. Aigeus was greatly remorseful for a brief falling out with his dearest cousin’s son, and quick to make up for that deficiency of royal temperament upon Cephalos return. There, once immersed in the royal court and foremost ministries attendant upon the right royal couple, Medeia found the rare man of her liking, a person capable of homage to herself, great assistance to her needy husband, and a mutual bright counselor to guide her most manifest brilliance at most everything. For Medeia brought all her qualities of great leadership to Attica from what she’d learned of them upon the Isthmus of Ephyrea. Accordingly, he was a great comfort to her lonely preoccupations beforetimes, and proved helpful to her eagerness to define and develop important relations with the many petty royal demesnes and rural plantation governances that outspread the deep and mostly unexplored interiors of the near outlying Greek nation races.

The Adversities Before and Most Manifest after 1368 BC:

Early in her administrative assistance to Aigeus, and the new mother of their child together, Medeios, Medeia’s talent for observances far afield brought home to Attica in early 1370 BC that most of south mainland Greek Peninsula had fallen under a livestock plague of devastating virulence. Likely her source of intelligence were the sea lords in residence of the Pyrrhaios Portside of Athens, an ilk most informed about serious matters concerning the Argives of Tiryns, Lerna and Argos Portside around the small Bay of Argos. The contagion proved owing to poorly cleansed holds of capacious sailing barges for cattle transport, after the cattle offladings to Nilotis of Egypt where major exchange of kine for bulk grains sent back to the Southland by return. Accordingly, the returned grains had been infected with a plague which the Nilotians recognized as Rhinderpest, which was well known to revive cyclically by staggard durations of seventeen to twenty years. When its contagion erupted anew it spread rapidly through wild hoofed ruminants and feral cattle overly exposed to wilderness woodland and alpine grassland. The name referred to the manner of death: The infected cattle succumbed by falling prone on their sides, whereupon the whole body constricted — folded up on its — to yield a convoluted carcass that had all noses and ghastly bent necks twisted around and pointing toward the anus. The snouts at death drooled foam from grimaced mouths.

Over a single year and an overwintering the total death count was an enormous percentage of domesticated cattle that Had fed on the imported grain from Nilotis. Severe accusations were laid to the Nilotians, and the Euryanassa Pasiphaia accepted the allegation as true that the barge transports had carried the contagion, but it was the Cretan skippers and pilots who had neglected the careful sanitation required of the barges conversions back and forth as export cattle carriers and imported grain stocks vice versa. Pasiphaia, alas, was repudiated by her husband the Minos, who shed Crete of all blames, most wrongly just so. Medeia was quick to take measures to address the contagion by trying to land lock its spreading at bursting over the Isthmus, or across the Saronic and Great Gulfs dividing the Greek Peninsula’s two mainland divisions from each other. Her astute orders to quarantine woodlands and shared grazing lands mitigated the spread of contagion with respect to the greatly vulnerable MesoGaia shared by so many rural governances.

The 1362 BC mapping discloses the light green areas of the entire MesoGaia and the entitled petty royals and rural governances that benefited from its rich pasturelands and cultivated tilth. We can appreciate Medeia’s thorough mitigation and,or forestalled spread of contagion from 1370 to early 1369 by realizing how great was the buffer zone that divided south from north mainland divisions of early Greece despite the bridge of the Isthmus as an unimpeded leaping of contagion over significant water barriers.

Over 1369 BC persistent allegations of blame fell hard upon the Great Minos, whose obdurance to admit Crete’s guilt brought on a crisis in international trade relations. Neglectful and preoccupied with cartel dealings under his control, Pasiphaia had to take charge and she did so through offering the heir apparent or prince-Minoataur Androgeos as an imperial proxy for diplomatic intercession upon the pervasive cattle pest. For Medeia’s mitigations could not endure the inevitable leaps of contagion from the Southland even as a MesoGaia seemed effectively quarantined. Indeed it was not. Androgeos arrived to the Pyrrhaios with effusive welcome from all the Saronic Gulf Rim Powers inclusive Ephyrea as well. But that handsome and charming gallant made boastful that the pest could be cured, when all who knew of its periodic re-occurrences of great virulence should have counseled the Prince-Minotaur to remain humble and modest. Nonetheless he proved an excellent goodwill ambassador fro his mother, who assisted him my urging upon her kinswoman Medeia that she should render the prince all assistance within her competence. By then, moreover, Cephalos was proving most competent at stewardship over worst consequences, to some good effect that north mainland cattlelands suffered only mild inflictions — at first! Cousin ad Vice Regent Lykos and Cephalos conjointly isolated contagions as they occurred, by taking excellent wisdom from the Sanctuary of the Dawn at Brauron, where they had major shipworks operation around the vast Brauron Basin interior.

For the High Sisters could explain how all woodlands surrounding the Sanctuary had been subjected to slaughter of all feral cattle and other large ruminants. And once such grazing land fell to disuse for forage and pasturage, entirely new breedstock of Aurochs had been introduced to enclosures to serve in lieu of bullocks and oxen and portage of great wagon loads of caravan commerce. The vision behind this amazingly sophisticated project of land reformation the High Sisters attributed to their young prodigy Skia of Aphidnai, but her own reasoning — and very early start — was owing to reasoning entirely different from mitigation of an unanticipated cattle plague. Her Goddess by living dream had taught her mortal incarnation had taught her the superior efficacy of breeding Aurochs for the huge strength and size they exhibited when castrated before their second year of age at accomplishing virility. For the species was so ferociously bellicose to cover their cows that all their constant pummeling of each other prevented the viril males from attaining their huge sizes for use as beats of burden. Furthermore, it was to Brauron’s greater prosperity that castrated Aurochs be put under yokes and chained as trains under wagon traces to maximize their true  economic benefits, that of transporting and haulage, or for shifting great weights of great burdens over commerce routes which successful caravan drovers had established by mule and donkey trains. Skia’s brilliance at such instruction and the attendant breeding had yielded numerous bred livestock Aurochs while also cleansing all lands of their forage from becoming infected by feral cattle or other contagion prone ruminants.

Androgeos was most impressed by this feat of most accidental and perfect mitigation. He sought to earn its credit to himself by a tour of Brauron, during which progress he gifted the north mainland with prize Aurochs bred in Crete. But while that now extinct species of bison, or ruminant, was then highly resistant to diseases, it took almost no time for the Cattle Pest to migrate farway from Brauron and devastate cattle everywhere else of north mainland Greece, most particularly throughout the Great Kingdom of Aeoleia and Minya under Aiakos. The pestilence then charged back south and infected what had first passed, the lands under Medeia’s mitigations in behalf of rural governesses over the MesoGaia. Worse to come, by late 1368 BC it seemed the Cattle Pest had run its course and healthy cattle could resume their normal increase. Celebratory games were held under Androgeos generous patronage.

Then another heavy foot dropped: Androgeos won all the games, and while he didn’t take away away his own prizes as a consistent victor, all the showing off rendered the prince-Minotaur much detriment. Upon one victorious march along the Saronic Gulf, where a tight passage leading out of Eleusis and into Alkathoos, Androgeos was guided to a best way to travel overland into Plateia at just south of where the High Kingdom of Kadmeis lay borderland perimeter. Ill-considering that Cretans were not in good favor as their corrupted sea lords confiscations of holds upon open sea, and commandeering of crews while at that miscreance, Androgeos relied on the goodwill generally disposed to him. Until, that is, he was attacked and slain upon the cited passage to which he was under guidance. There, upon Alkathoos, the blame for the killing was turned upon Cephalos’ first cousin the Vice Regent Nisos for somehow fomenting a brief and deadly uprising. That nonsense could not be repressed and Nisos became responsible for all manner of restitution imposed upon the feudatories subjugate to the Great Minos of Crete. He, moreover, woke up at last to his neglect of his feudatories and used his son’s slaying as an excuse to humble them all.

The Imposed Tribute Takings of the Great Minos:

The Cattle Pest resumed its devastating progress over uninfected and previously reprieved Greek rural realms, but it must have seemed relatively mild by comparison to early year’s rampant contagion. All attention quelled and was put upon Attica and her other Saronic Gulf Rim Powers. Book Four of our serialization explains carefully why the Great Minos felt a large score of grievances must be settled over the severe retribution required for the slain Androgeos.  The Mother Island again became nastily imperious, forsaking the exemplary Lykastos’ generous concessions of autonomy and self-assertion by his feudatories. One reason the reversals to benigh temperament was the mounting tally of the severe mercantile losses of Cretan merchant marine, especially within the Mid Sea Isles (the Cyclades). An entirely unknown naval adversary suddenly lurked the flanks of the seas mains and feeding fareways of maritime commerce still under Cretan hegemony as a cartel sea power severely enforcing monopolies against parvenu merchant magnates. Even the ascendant Levantines and convoyed fleets of monopolistic Pharaohs of Nilotis (a.k.a.,Egypt). Nobody could state where the suspected piracy deep sea was originating, or upon what land power it was dependent.

For such was the brilliance of the Prince Erechtheids, boon friends of the stalwartly secretive Cephalos, that nobody could assess the overwhelming efficacy that 75 war galley Triakonters were finally effecting by 1368 BC. Their ambit of coast guard stayed covert at their patrols and stalking of the real piracy, all of whch was originating or being condoned by Cretan cartel enforcers. . A small and insignificant coast guard over the little Myrtoan Sea had come , nonetheless, to safeguard all sea mains near Attica and the Myrtoan Sea. they cruised surreptitiously  the Great Southwest Main, the Ikarian Corridor and the Cretan Sea Main. The stayed out of sight of far vigilance over sea from hostile isles and seashore. Gross infractions of piracy were very real, but solely as abetted by the sea lords resident the Pyrrhaios. Unlike ebforetimes, though, they no longer got away with flagrant piracy and their occasional pillage of defenseless islands within the lesser archipelagoes which composed the Cretan Archipelago of the Northern or White Sea that was actually to progenitive to the Aegean Sea by the far future times of the Ancient Greeks. The Great Minos, a.k.a King Minos II out of the Classical Greek Mythography of 500 BC, ff., was out of touch with his miscreant sea lords but eveready to suppress ablest mercantile mariner rivals within his Cretan Thalassocracy.  His monopolies were failing; Isthmian Ephyrea, which he could not affect, was rendering mainland and overland commerce wholly competitive with them. Accordingly, in conjunction with his vengeful great tribute taking to punish the Greek Mainland Feudatories for a son’s death , the following was decreed as aimless to that point as rendered to writ by Mentor son-of-Alkimos.

  1.  The tribute offerings would be assessed every six years and became called “the Takings.” [That staggering did not hold up as the subsequent early Takings after 1368 — either the Second of 1362 or the Third of 1354.]
  2.  14 well-matured children, finest attained swains and maidens born of royal and highest parentages, would be single out and wrested away to Crete forever to the palace metropolis of Knossos.
  3.  Stored and amassed trade goods accrued between Takings would be segregated impost and finally treasured during the Taking year after final tally and publically announced assessment.
  4.  Seagoing vessels, mercantile or war naval allowed the deep sea mains, could not breast more than sixteen sweep oars, howsoever manned, as projecting their broadsides. Offenders and offenses of such oarage count, would be punished by the commandeering of their vessels upon discovery of any violations. Executions incurred during enforcement actions would not be punished or redressed.
  5. Feudatory maritime commerce under convoy, or escorted by other safeguard by their realms and mainland sponsors, could no longer carry cartel goods of Cretan merchant magnates.
  6. Cartel covered goods, or monopolies, could no longer be challenged by competitive offerings at open and fee barter exchange upon the many entrepots under Cretan dominance.

The above summarized decrees, Mentor futhermore observed, left begging answers to certain practical questions, e.g., how such edicts could be fairly enforced, by whom exactly enforced martially, or how appealed after the facts of redress. The entire scheme, therefore,was hideous injustice, wholly one-sided oppression that overlooked livelihoods of the many longshoremen and lowly mariners dedicated to sea duty. No mind paid due either that deep and valid suspicions of the Cretan sea lords waywardness upon the mains and fareways at safeguarding the tranquility of the seas. Arrogant impunity attended their past glaring violations of free trading and open barter exchange. No novel enforcement measures or inducements were considerable.

Cephalos took upon himself the senior ministry to safeguard any potential violators who might arise from his burgeoning followings of successfull maritime employed and dedicated families to export commerce. The most likely seafarers envisioned harmed were the Levantines and Anatolian Karians who populated Salamis Island with trade stations and winter residencies for their retreats from fair voyaging seasons at end. He had the Princes Erechtheid and their adjutant sea commanders, commanders and master pilots learn henceforth how to operate under the darkness of nighttime flotilla deployments, or awhile permitted their escort and convoy responsibilities. And yet the gist of his offered efficacy needed no say-so whatsoever. The entire hierarchy of followings, much tiered as it was from highest to lowest, had been his father’s martial strength to protect the borders of the Rim Powers. They had burgeoned from many retired veterans into useful roles at sea duty and overland trade conveyance. His first cousins greatly supplemented such volunteers, and Cephalos was also assured that the generation of new followings would follow upon the mature practices and routines of a superbly manned naval commerce. Cephalos himself served his sponsors as spokesman for the needs and requirements of the lowly followings that delivered their most faithful reliable services. He also spoke for grievances as they might arise. Longshore populaces, whole families of whom demarcated the many divisions of labor attendant manning or manufactory of trade goods, were welcomed to speak for improvments, suggestions towards great competitiveness and the supervision or maintenance of finest quality controls.

That Cephalos was just so, so quiet yet intent at fostering his followings, won the heart of Medeia. He drew the loyalty of Aigeus and his royal ministries, concomitantly, as the maturing and aging followings were drawn for their consummate expertise. Of course. the plurality of skills spurred efficiency, productivity and astute self-maintenance coomunal objectives. An odd form of polity, neither oligarchic or haughtily aristocratic, gave powers to elites without powers of wealth, and yet those powers of wealth honored the efficacy of low peoples everywhere for the ewlites that they engendered  to a greatest mix of diversities. Poverty and powerless could not be ignored, of course, but all such populace as proved insufficient could find meek place by being treated with dignity. Emphatically to be said, Medeia was wonderfully surprised by a far more brilliant man than her husband, whose newly modified royal duties and general comportment struck an intermediary role of practiced postures and practices that all could grasp, even as they wondered how his efficacy could be taken so happily for granted throughout the. rim of the Saronic Gulf. Upon his return, moreover, the entire littoral along the Abantis Strair were indoctrinated into his means of attaiing deep interior outreach from every landfall to which he provided minimal infrastructure. Yet again his planted and found followings tautened any slack; communal endeavor ashore and abroad interiors showed itself “ship-shaped” awhile superbly led by all manners and ranks dense occupation.

While I cannot and do not offer any illusion of democracy brought to a vogue before its actual time, that so many men served crews and working billets at voyages of commerce itineraries, that their women and grown children served the landfall communities everywhere with serious autonomy, from the embarkations and returns to port of their men through what his strictly intermediary representation of all classes and castes meant, was what I believe Aristotle at much later time called timocracy. It stood for most obvious authoritative elites whose appreciation of humble services they awarded with self-dignity. Elites were capable of cardinal virtue of charis (selfless generosity at disposing dignity to all without self-remuneration) That virtue earned them freedoms to operate gainfully; or allowed their governances  skilled artisans and operatives who realized due respect from, thus fidelity to their persons. [Timocracy faded from the polity of the Atticans during the later historical ages, during which much tension between elite oligarchs and lowly democrats who were duly elected franchise. But Aristotle spoke from real memory of venerable practices, at believing especially how  shipboard manning of large class vessels of human conveyance served general society ashore and at home as perfect crucible to a balance of obediences, by heed to proper command echelons but also by inured and self-directed individual proficiency.

Nonetheless, because the name of Cephalos was lent to none of what happy reminiscence of the Saronic Gulf Rim Powers and maritime Ephyrea engendered from Eleusis Sound and Sanctuary, timocracy faded away as elite polities at coordination of their whole. Cephalos, of course, became a High Prince and Consort of a highest princess and a priestess of paramount gifts. He nurtured timocracy, but how it manifest was his rare quality of affecting balances of power upon all who supported his efficacy so generously.

I cut off this thesis of his intyermediary polity and what it affected of orderly ministry and daily industry during Cephalos’ Saronic Gulf years of youth ad career formation. There’s been much talk of his naval genius and very little about the milieus that it orchestrated as matters of naval architecture and purposeful designs of useful vessels at heavy conveyances. This series of reviews moves to such fundamentals as created the Second Era of Great Oared Vessels, and also to such merchant shipping and construction as he  did not lay familiar hands to build.

for R. Bacon Whitney at publishing and merchandising of Bardot Books