Original First Part Posting of August, 2012
Posted on August 14, 2012 by R Bacon Whitney, Publisher of Bardot Books
Because of the popular reception of this particular Bardot Blog, I’ve enhanced it for further clarity and better understanding by lay readers. Our academic posture is aggressive by its refutation of Classical Greek Mythology and our fullest re-assertions of Early Greek Myths as cutural prehistory about Greeks of the Late Aegean Bronze Age.
A Portrait of a young Alkeios son-of-Amphitryon, at 17 years old and as the appointed Champion Home Protector of the Argives. By a sculptural depiction and commission which has him in depiction of Herakles by the Hellenistic Age, afterwards his apotheosis as the superhero of the very last of the Greeks at incursion of the Greek Peninsula.On the subject of these two great men by imperial Argolis, my now greatly dated Bardot Blog explained the 14th century BC’s last forty years of duration for the great civil works that were implemented by the Argives. The two mythic personages, of course, survive mostly from what Classical Greek Mythology explains of them biographically, for lack of befitting prehistorians that survived from the Late Aegean Bronze Age to attest for them. That final mythography, alas, greatly revised the earliest myths of robust biographical content, until the Labors of Herakles/Hercules were completed by the 8th century BC. The final authors of the major revisionism were the Dorians; they supplanted the Argives of the Mycenaean Age, whose sub-Mycenaean duration ended under the impetus of a greatly regressive Greek Dark Age. Giddy to think themselves a master race by the end of the Era of Helen, for originating from alpine precursors called the Dorian Highlanders who ruled the Delphic Oracle, they adopted Herakles as a superhero and major cult heroic figurehead, becoming the son of the primordial Thunder God Dyaos, the future Olympian deity Zeus. It is impossible to understate how greatly later Ancient Greeks believed in such a broadly general-ized, apocryphal national hero for his inordinate feats of manhood. But what must really amaze us of modern times is how great the range of Hercules’ later feats and travels, until he became fabulous beyond all possible credibility.
The real mortal and prodigious young man who became Herakles was named Alkeios Son of Amphitryon. He was believed of inordinate heroic capacities and yet he was mortally ill-blessed with a short life. That the Dorians caused him to rise above his mortal human condition predestined to apotheosis, which occurred while he was still a young man, supposedly attested some innate immortality as blessed by his formal initiation into the occult Eleusinian Mysteries. There was no such apotheosis, however, until the last immigrant nation race, the Achaeans/Achaiwoi/Ahhiyawans brought from Anatolia and sub-Balkan north country a deified mortals such as the Great Kings of the Imperial Hatti became upon their deaths. So, there’s puzzlement.
This Bardot Blog shall not explain those esoteric intricacies to a greatly expanded until vigorous mortal legend, or any time frame much beyond the 1360s to the 1310s BC of Greek prehistory. The basis in prehistory that must rule honest biography has a mortal man Alkeios of the honorific title Herakles, one of several so honored by the many passing generations of alpine Greek Highlanders. He arose from the career accomplishments of a real person Alkeios, accordingly.
Here’s going to be much unlearning to learnings anew of the Great Oral Tradition’s genuine origination of Herakles.
Born In Thebes, but always a Great Prince of Argolis
He was born in New Thebes during his father’s regency over the New House of Thersandros there; it replaced the High Kingdom of Kadmeis and the House of Kadmos. Even so Alkeios was royally, even imperially descendant from two branch lineages of the illustrious House of Perseus & Andromeda. For Amphitryon and future wife Alkmene Alkeios’ parents were akin, he the oldest of their royal generation by dynastic descent, she of the youngest by her sacral generation. Alkeios’ brief life was spurred to greatest mortal feats by his branch royal line kinsman and nearly exact contemporary Eurystheus, the appointed Great Wanax Regent over imperial Argolis after the death of his liege, a founding patriarch, the dynast Pelops the Conqueror. His accession occurred in the 1360s BC in his very old age, whereby his appointed imperial title of Great Wanax, or Chief-of-Chiefs.
Both Persëid kinsmen, Alkeios and Eurystheus, were greatly favored by the Conqueror. Pelops’ grace upon them was by separate ways, and intended for different purposes at employ of their distinct great talents by their youths. As Bronze Age Argolis regained imperial stature after the 1360s, and then began expansionary outreach as a meld of oldest and newest dynasties under Pelops, the once formidable House of Perseus & Andromeda instated Eurystheus as the custodial regent over Pelops’ sons Atreus and Thyestes. Eurystheus and Alkeios led this fused dynasty together and most ambitiously. As such collaborators at a great peace by Pelops, they became by strictly human and mortal assertions dual of supremacy in concert. They did not survive in the lore of Antiquity atsuch amity, however, for the mythography that survived beyond the Early Greek Mythology and the completion of the Great Oral Tradition of pre-Hellenes and earliest Greeks.
The New Dynasty of Pelops
While it can definitely be stated that Pelops died as a patriarch in the fullest sense of hereditary royal entitlement, by him there ensued a virtually new dynasty which was immediately imperial. Most peculiarly it extended from one much older and more alien high kingdom than Argolis by Anatolia, where his own father Tantalos was High King of Maeonia and.or the Seha River Lands, both satellite to imperial ascendancy of the Hatti (a.k.a., the Hittites). He crossed the Aegean Sea to avenge depredation by Argives, conquered Elis circa 1405 with his uncle Pleisthenes, and they expanded that footing into an important kingdom over the Westlands’ many petty kingdoms of the future Peloponnese. He then had lived his life onward to appropriate Argolis through a marriage of his son Chrysippos to the most important bride to be won from the Argives. Her name was Hippodameia. After decades of diplomacy to arrange a betrothal, his quest was ruined by his son’s overt homosexuality. Belatedly, Pelops would marry Hippodameia in his old age, still delighted for her prospect as he came to marital age, whereupon he consolidated an imperium by melding her Persëid dynastic matrilineage to his patrilineage by the High Kingdom of Maeonia. Such, to repeat with emphasis, was how a “Dual Dynasty” might wed together the House of Tantalos by Anatolia and the long indigenous House of Perseus by Argolis as indubitably Greek – or just as the much later legend-makers of Anceint Greece must insist he’d been from birth. When he died, therefore, Pelops had achieved the stable conditions of a great peacetime, through, I must again repeat, the still extensive sway of the Persëids over all native denizens of the future Peloponnesus, Eurystheus ably sought to maintain his own forefathers’ legacies, whereas Alkeios enforced his own despite two exiles he had to perform in most aloof capacity. Empowered by his kinsman sovereign Eurystheus having disclaimed his any sovereign status in behalf of Thebes, thus a necessity met bravely and honestly to keep the tranquility of Argolis both internally and externally efficacious.
The result was an imperial Argolis which stretched from the alpine coastline overlooking the Saronic Gulf, and the Argolid Peninsula to its western armature, all the way to the western piedmont of the alpine Southland whose streams and rivers flowed into the Ionian Sea. It became named the Peloponnesus late in the 11th century BC for what Pelops so ably wrought, first but briefly militarily but subsequently by his many decades of patient, dogged and truly amazing diplomacy as a pacifier of his original intentions towards dire redress.
Great Princes born, but Great Wanax Solely by Appointment
Alkeios and Eurystheus, moreover, were Great Prince by royal branches that rendered that title alike a Grand Duke, each born into the conditioning of valiant young men such as their Persëid forebears once had been — model champions-at-arms and able land stewards for the domestic matriarchal governesses who ruled over the agronomy of the Argive Great Plain during the early 14th century. From such women of sacral majesty and exalted matrilineage both Great Princes of House derived their own royal majesties, as appointed to standby supreme powers during major crises or warfare. No war, that is, once had meant no such supreme supremacy for the male sex as warlords. Peace meant all territory was vouchsafed, or assumed still fully reverted, to the traditionally able governance of women.
That last assertion, alas, is today a greatly underestimated doctrine about the Argives of the Late Aegean Bronze Age. Many modern scholars wholly disbelieved in any matriarchal genesis of the pre-Hellenes, despite a long tradition of classical studies at the charting of the Greeks’ most illustrious royal dynasts who had been woemn. So disbelieving were the ancient historians, about matriarchy of any characterization; so for why they were still utterly dismissive of so many foremost female exemplars who married truly supreme men. Even today there’s barely a notional possibility of a championship or home protective role ever reserved for men, as conducted by outstanding consorts a/o husbands as consort lord protectors of their wives, or their mothers, or even their sisters as attained to foremost sacral supremacy over both genders of elite personages.
So, accordingly, we’ve considerable unlearning ahead to accomplish for most readers of Bardot Blogs. We put the lay scholars among them, sending them forth on their ways and best means of properly addressing the two great paragons of this Blog’s title.
The Law of Patriarchal Genesis & Dynasty
First, though, some lessons to such necessary remediation as required to explain why both great men’s biographies must be rendered in order to expunge any fiercest rivalry with each other. For that rivalry by Classical Greek Mythology is an utter nonsense, and not just because Ancient Greeks at mythography offered feeble premise as Eurystheus’ primogeniture and Alkeios’ inevitable resentment of that fact. That riddance of rivalry done, the attendant myths of contretemps dismissed, we can then remove, as well, any residual impression that their respective personalities, and,or characters, were somehow too dichotomous, thus too inimical to their separate postures of sovereignty throughout their lifetimes. How a fierce rivalry was built up beyond normal human proportions by Ancient Greeks, who lived far later than both great men, requires royal succession as strictly determined by primogeniture, as the primary, if not the only proper claimant requirement of male rule by divine ascension. In the Bronze Age, hereditary rights to supremacy arose solely upon the severe precondition that a man of a particularly well esteemed royal lineage must pass his lineage son-to-son-to-son until a third direct succession. The son need not be a first son, but that third direct accession, or fourth successor, become a hereditary dynast, a divinely sanctioned “namer of House” for all his descendants to inherit after vetting of merits. So that fourth man declared the first forbear as the acknowledged patriarch, and then named the House of his dynasty after him or any of the direct forbears preceding him — notwithstanding that they had been appointed to their supreme powers. There had to be exactly such a track record for a lineage enabled dynastic, until ultimately deemed hereditary by all the sons and descendants by the name giver of House.
[There are exceptions to this severe rule about hereditary dynastic succession, mostly due to founders outliving their direct male offspring. Nestor, the Wanax over the Messenes, and Diomedes, King over the Argolid Peninsula & Massif of Spider Mountain, come to mind. But they are exceptions that prove the rule of three direct successors from an initial patriarch. The exceptions made for them make too clear how their royal legitimacy was by sound circumvention, unanimously approved at the times of generational ascendancies and prehistory concurrent the Trojan War.]
From the patriarchal great grandfather through two direct filial successions to his great grandson, so the reckoning of Ancient Greeks for both Eurystheus and Alkeios as Argive Great Princes. They were both of indubitable hereditary standing. However, yet another Great Prince, Elektryon, by another branch royal lineage of the Persëids, had superseded them both as Great Wanax over Argolis. He outlived all his claimant successors until he died of a goring by a bull that Alkeios’ father Amphitryon was held scapegoat for, even as earlier made the blessed guardian of Elektryon’s daughter Alkmene. Eurystheus, by the branch of the Sthenelids was successor to his appointed father, a fourth Sthenelos; Alkeios, though, was by the foremost branch of the Alkëids, after Alakios son-of-Perseus. Both of them were of equal hereditary claimant status to rule imperially over Argolis.
Pelops had become a new dynast, instead, by claiming the rule of succession as applied to his royalty by the High Kingdom and House of Tantalos of Anatolian Maionia. Ancient Greeks greatly objecting he gained full legitimacy nonetheless; but only by marrying Hippodameia, the foremost sacral majesty that attested her own direct descent from the root dynasty of Perseus & Andromeda. Pelops, moreover, became the arbiter of who would become his successor, if not his own sons. Duly he appointed Eurystheus as a regent custodian and guardian over a hereditary imperium. Chrysippos was dispensed with so that collateral cousin Alkeios could become a chief land steward and also Argolis’ foremost champion-at-arms. Pelops had lived to know that in his extreme dotage, perhaps, after all his very long life as loving the idea of both Great Princes as co-regent, whereas a proudly untitled Sthenelos conceded their foremost exaltation for the great feats that they both engendered for him complicitly, together, by remembrance that he was briefly their liege sovereign.
Here, at this juncture of the many biographies under examination, I defer the further complexities of my original exposition, the Bardot Bog of August, 2012. I have a new book just past its professional editing, thus now pending my last formal emendations before its design towards public release. Its Book Six, but the first in a series, Cephalos in Transition and Exile: Argives and Kadmians. Cephalos’ Saronic Gulf yearsof lifetime are ending, but there is much that has been redacted away from the previous serialization about him, Cephalos Ward of Eleusis, Books I-V, the last of which ended with the accidental homicide of Prokris owing to a famous mythical short story about the ending of their remarriage (1360) ending 1362 BC.
What begins beyond the book of transition from one serialization to a second articulates the second lifetime of the hero Cephalos, whereby his steady ascendancy in the far west of the Greek Peninsula & Isles as the future PaleoPatair of the Cephallenes and appointed High Chief over the dominions of the Ionian Isles. What I have redacted away about Alkeios as the future Herakles in earliest making as an Argive superhero belongs to the second half century discussions and prehistory of the 14th century BC. Those decades began with the birth of Alkeios in 1349 BC in Thebes, as delivered by his adulterous mother Alkmenë after her husband Amphitryon, Alzeios’ sire, must discover her longtime lover Rhadamanthys of Crete Island. Their ardent affair had venues of Mycenae and Tiryns before his diplomatic presence within the high city Kademia of (New) Thebes, whereby adultery of a betrothal and long deferred marriage by the arranged endogamy of Alzeios’ parents, which by preponderance of the scholarship about them proves out a true mating of Amphitryon and Alkmene, despite her long time belief in Rhadamanthys as a sire of sufficient potency to have her discovered of child by him.
Not so. Alzeios was not begotten of an illicit tryst as Classical Greek Mythology has insisted for the birth of Herakles. He was not sired by Zeus off the perfidious mind and lap of his mother. She was left to wonder why she’s never been impregnated by Rhadamanthys, whom she’d marry in old age after Amphitryon died of a wasting disability that we cannot diagnose of that here’s premature dotage during the sixties year of age and awhile his popular, but somewhat complicated regent custodianship for the new dynasty and House of Thersandros over Ancient Thebes. I do not want to reckon with the complexities as yet, until my sixth book about Cephalos becomes released. So the second part discussion about the harmonious Eurystheus and Alzeios must still be formalized as speculative, even as I’m sure that my argumentative assertions of their biographies and prehistory will hold up for both Great Princes of Imperial Argolis. I only must regret that the original Bardot Blogs that rendered all that prehistory were deleted from the archives of Word Press, a very reliable compiler until WEB.com managed to ineptly purge all 180 of my Bardot Blogs. Therefrom they are irretrievable. The original drafts which I retained through many back-up discarded desktops and their several hard drives became several years later, in 2022, the victims of a hacker whom I refused to remunerate at the time he broke into my data bases through the server of my e-Mails. He despoiled of all drafted Bardot Blogs going back compositions beginning in 2008.
I leave this treatise, therefore, such it now must compose in two parts and starkly naked of its original sources copyrighted as Bardot Books.
for the Bardot Group
In Attribution:
While she’s never been a contributor to the Bardot Group’s symposia of the 20th century, Marianne Nichols must be credited for a most distinguished academic record at mythology, and particularly for her efficacious approach to Classical Greek Mythology’s historicity by what’s residually by the Ancient Greeks’ mythography. Such content she has drawn with marvelous coherence from earliest Bronze Age mythic personages and regional events. The following book is out of print, but it’s well worth referencing or acquiring as a collectible edition.
So, accordingly, for Man, Myth, and Monument, by Marianne Nichols, 1975.
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