Cephalos

Cephalos was a very late patriarch within a well-arrived age of illustrious mythic personages. By this serialization in restoration of what Classical Greek Mythology has expunged of his biography, Cephalos addresses boldly the formative coalition of small navies that he’s centered around Greece’s Saronic Gulf. His naval genius, introduced through three previous books, shall eventually realize a second era of great oared vessels. His establishment of the small-class galleys called triakonters attends the time covered within this fourth book. This series spans a half century of Cephalos’ ascendancy throughout the Gulf Rim Powers, as we now move beyond his birthplace in Eleusis. He’s twice born royal and he has carried that stature back to Attica from a brief consortship to the Princess of Magnesia. The fi ve books in this series examine fully the decades from the 1390s to the 1360s BC. This fourth book, The High Prince of Attica, recites of Cephalos’ early years of highest royal ministry, beginning with his exalted marriage to High Princess Prokris of Attica. A sacral majesty, evocative of Attica’s deep roots in a matriarchal dynasty, Prokris is the sole surviving direct descendant by 1370 BC when Cephalos marries her. Prokris is of rich, great landedness while also a failed postulant to Artemis in her earliest divinity known to the fi rst true Greeks. Having breached her vows of chastity far too many times, she’s been cursed with barrenness, which she cannot accept. She cannot realize Cephalos’ potency, but his overwhelm of her soon proves a boon to stymie any divine redress against her. He takes over her extensive governance, also that of Medeia, Queen Consort to King Aigeus. Accordingly, in addition to his naval exploits from Brauron of Bay Attica, and awhile his orchestration of overland caravans and maritime outreach by commerce overseas, he fulfi lls the highest ascendancy respective to both those illustrious heroines, as most certainly real personages of Greek prehistory. This book, therefore, proves out a fourfold ascendancy in continuation of a series that shall eventually pit great wealth and abilities by maritime Greeks against imperial Crete of the wicked Great Minos and his loathsome son, the prince-Minotaur Asterion.