House Ascendant
Odysseus & His Family in the Early Thirteenth Century BC.
by
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CHAPTER TWO - THE NAMING As Laërtes related to Mentor early in his tutelary capacity, The word that my wife needed rescue upon Neriton was brought to me while I was with her father, Autolykos. He had taken the calm of that morning to be rowed across the channel, and was to spend several days with us before going further south, to Pylos, under escort and protection of the League. Coming upon him early that early afternoon, I had found him despondent with the loss of the properties under his former stewardship. They’d been a considerable legacy from his mother Chionë, not to say of dia-Amphithea’s as well, a most considerable matrimonial demesne. He was steward now only of his mother’s dedicatory kine, now that she was dead, yet he remained as he’d been before the Isthmian War, overly possessive about everything under his care. He also felt the hatred of the people around him for his villainous acts during that horrendous warfare. I attempted to encourage him, pointing out that atonement would become manifest through his determined new beginnings. They were considerable and promising, and through them he had found some assurance anew of the great respect that he’d enjoyed before the Isthmian War. But while I consoled him, I was distracted by everything else that was going on, and his embittered constitution worked a hardship for my patience. Notwithstanding, once the birth of my son had taken place I considered it providential that the grandfather's often postponed visit had befallen us the same day. I thought it appropriate to grant Autolykos the right to name my son. My own father had that honor under the custom of the House, but he agreed to forego it to the other grandfather, as a gesture toward the alliance of our clans. Father adored Anticleia for the sweet companionship she provided him in his loneliness. Her own father had earned his warmest respect simply by being her father. Anticleia, when I told her, was cool to the idea of the naming, but her own good spirits led her to comply after a little argument. We brought the child before both grandfathers. Anticleia's cortege, especially the adorable handmaiden Eurycleia, made great ceremony of the presentation. Autolykos warmed to the occasion, though he was nervous with excitement at the responsibility of the naming. He asked a few moments for consideration, and took many more than a few, sitting in silence as all waited. Finally, he spoke. “Daughter, it's a kind land that can forgive the past so soon, and give me the blessing of naming the child of its leading house.” He paused and took the time to look from me to my father, then back to me. “I understand, Laërtes, that there is something that makes this honor even more earnest – a custom all have agreed to set aside for this occasion. So it is also a kind House that honors one grandfather ,” he touched his chest , a humble gesture of the hand, “over another who is supreme over these seas surrounding us. “I've prayed for forgiveness of my crimes of greed and deceit. Now my prayers are answered by you both, perhaps sooner than I deserve. “May these Echinades Isles be blessed by this child of my daughter's birthing. Blessed be her maternity, come to fruition in the wrath of storm. May her first child’s judgment be hard and rightful, and may love triumph in him over rage. Let us call this baby Odysseus, Child of Wrath, that we never forget that good may be born from evil times surpassed. The mother was born at the onset of Atreus' fury: May this birth mark that fury’s end.” He laughed, then, and we all laughed. I was thrilled. It was a strong name. It rang of Storm Wrath, the God King known to our Hyperborean ancestry. The Crone Elders would greatly approve. I could see that my own father felt the same majesty in the name. He lifted the baby and pronounced him a true son of his father's line. Then, still holding the child aloft, he gave the customary blessing to Anticleia for the gift of her fertility. All the landed matrons, in the days that followed the birth, did her and the babe honor, bringing fine gifts and vows of protective prayers.
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About the Book
House Ascendant
presents the comings-of-age of the epic hero and his best friend by homeland Greece; they’re both famous from The Odyssey by Homer, although the book assumes our readers have not the least knowledge of them. So, accordingly, from Odysseus’ birth while under the care of his mother Anticleia our volume tells settings and tales about Odysseus as a boy. He meets Mentor while they’re both lads at war campaign with their fathers, both acting as messengers until Mentor becomes Ward-of- House under the tutelage of Odysseus’ father Laërtes. An apprentice of naval command under his father, we learn of Odysseus’ teenage years until just past his accession to the co-regent title of Fleetmaster. Mentor, meanwhile, becomes a student and practitioner at the difficult arts of dictation through his commitment to writ inscribed entablature - itself best known to scholars as the famous syllabary of pictograms called Linear B Minoan. Odysseus’ eventual command over the Near Fleets of the Ithacan League has the able testament of Mentor to bring both their exciting lives through the zenith of the Mycenaean Age.Protohistory, in contrast to our many novelistic approaches to historical fiction, employs biography as a framework against which events of authentic and plausible prehistory can be affixed. Expository fiction fills in the lost gaps by destroyed sources, while explaining robustly the regions and happenings surrounding the lives of several protagonists. It speaks, in general and solely, from the captured viewpoints of sovereigns, or of the highest peers attendant upon them.
About the Author
S. W. Bardot
The translator of Mentor and sometimes author of the material complimentary to his ancient writ is the Bardot Group, a scholarly symposium which writes under the pseudonym S. W. Bardot. Bardot Books, therefore, constructs from biography and prehistory the seamless run of most important events which occurred during the Late Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Ages. The emphasis affixes upon the 13th and 14th Centuries BC of the former. We are robust, authentic and entirely plausible in our reconstruction of both ages along with their vital chronology of subsidiary events.