ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
In an ancient world, the Manaen Anaxion is head of the Anaxionade family, out cast from the city of Thebes since the days years ago when his father and brother fought on the losing side, struggles to bring influence and wealth back to his family while returning to the love of Marophon Cleomanes who once scorned him.
PART ONE
AWAKENING
αφύπνιση
Thebes is famous for such figures as Cadmos, Herakles, Oepidus and the God Iacchus himself, and certainly many cities have dramas surrounding mythological families such as the Atreide of Mykenae, but without a doubt the most important family to the history of Thebes and the strength-ening of the northeastern lands is the Anaxionade, and no one was more crucial to their rise and the rise of Thebes than Manaen Anaxionades.
from -A Brief History of Ellix
by Photeus Nikias
CHAPTER ONE
THE HOUSE OF ANAXION
Οικοσ Αναχιον
MANAEN’S MOTHER STILL SAYS, “Oh yes, you remember… this,” or “Do you remember that?” Or, “Yes you have been to that place, seen that thing,” when regarding something which happened when he was a babe in arms, a toddler. Manaen Anaxion can barely remember a thing before his fifth birthday,and that would have been the year the old king died. He had been exiled years before, the year of the sickness, which was the same year as Manaen’s birth. Later stories told of how that king came, ridding the people of Thebes of another plague, a great sphinx, a lion with the head of a woman or, if you will, a woman with the body of a lion, and wings. She had sat on a rock before the gates of the city, riddling men, and if the man could not guess her riddle, he died. Correct that. She killed him.
The city of Thebes had seven gates, and so Manaen had always wondered why people simply wouldn’t have taken another gate. But the sphinx had wings so, one imagines, she would have flown to whatever gate people went.
Somehow, the king before the old king, the really old king, had managed to leave the city, seeking an oracle or a savior, and while on the road he was slain. More bad news. Now, the city of Thebes is old, and over the years there were many kings and they had sons and daughters and so, throughout the city were the Noble Houses, and the old king, ruling from the last noble house had wed a queen of another noble House, the House of Naxticyon, and when the king was known to be dead, then his queen and her brother ruled as lord and lady protectors of the city. The queen’s brother would have, in time, gone to the council to be declared king, but there were other noble families and it would have been a long fight for a title he didn’t need. Blessedly, the fight was curtailed when the Prince of Daurs came.
“I have heard it said,” Manaen told his son, Mykon, “and I believe, that rather than fighting the sphinx, he was the one with the sphinx. Some have said that it was Prince Oedipus, the son of the king and queen of Daurs, who arrived in Thebes with his sphinx and put down the true enemy, the bandits surrounding the city. One would think all of this was lost in history, and not a thing that had happened when my mother was a girl.”
“Then she would know,” the curly haired handsome boy decided.
His father shook his head.
“She could not tell you the truth. She was just a girl, and little children have other things to think about than kings and queens, and little children believe the tales their elders tell them.”
“As I believe what you say, Father?” the boy grinned at him coyly, curling his legs under him. Mykon was long limbed even then, with smooth skin like old ivory and thick curly hair touched with bronze. His father, darker, with southern blood, smiled ruefull and said, “Ah, but I will try to tell as much of the truth as I know.
“Oedipus was tall and elegant, a king in his own right, my father said, destined to rule the far off city of Daurs. And this was why my family loved him. Unlike the other families of note, we are not from Thebes. We were respected and noted, but still foreign. My grandfather had come from Axum, far to the south, to live as a merchant, and my father had become even greater, marrying a woman of an old family, begetting my brother, me and your aunt Antha. Though we faired well enough, it was known that there were several families ahead of us, first the Noble Families, the cadet branches descended from kings and queen and whom, when one house died out, gathered to elect a new king from amongst themselves. Beyond them were the very oldest families, Thebans from the very beginning, divided into two equal groups, by now so intermarried it barely mattered. The Sparti, often mighty warriors, and the Agae. Some were quite wealthy and some lived in collapsed houses, properties crumbling about them, clinging to their names. Still they were descended from the founders, the pure stock of Thebes. Wealthy as we were, and though we had come here in the days of my grandfather, we were called mercoi, foreigners, and I imagined as long as we bore my grandfather’s name we always would be.”
He stopped talking.
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“What came next?”
“Oh… you should not always humor me,” Manaen said. “A man should not talk to much and bend his son’s ear. Get up. Stretch yourself.”
“Will you come to the bath with me after I practice with my sword?”
“You will attend your mathematics with Axatratus,” Manaen said, rising, “and then you will practice fighting. I will not have my Anaxionade son grow into a stupid soldier. Be a soldier, but not a stupid one.”
Mykon lauged and ran off and looking at the handsome boy, Manaen thought, “That is his mother and her clan. That is not me, surely, that gave him such beauty, beauty like a girl’s almost.”
While his son got up, Manaen continued talking to himself.
“But in these days, Oepidus himself was mercoi, his handsome sons, Polynieces and Eteocles, his daughters, Terpsichore and Antiope as well. We from Axum and the other mercoi families held our heads up with more pride than we ever had before, and the star of our family, the House of Anaxeon, rose higher.”
And then had come that year when Manaen was a babe in a cracle, when disaster came to Thebes. Nothing grew and the sun was hot upon the land, rivers shriveled and now, toward the coming of a blighted autumn, plague entered the city. As the old king before him had done, so King Oedipus sent men out to find a seer and so Teiresias came.
Years later, Manaen had wondered how they found the seer.
“He is a witch,” Marophon had said, “So he will know he is needed.”
“Careful with that word,” Manaen had warned. “My people revere the men and women of power. They even say Teiresias is of Axum, like me.”
Marophon laughed at his darker, shorter, stockier friend in that way which sometimes irritated Manaen. Marophon, so sure of himself, bright eyed, blue eyed, dark curling hair on his head.
“You are no more of Axum than I am!” he said.
Manaen said nothing. Marophon was ever proud of being of the Sparti on one side and the Agae on the other, a first man of the city, tall and handsome and Manaen had to admit that in those days he was still in awe of him, surprised to have him for a friend. Manaen took great pride and being Axumi, and Marophon often forgot until he had overstepped himself, and so then he looked on Manaen nervously, grabbing his shoulder and shaking it.
“Come on, now,” he said, “You know I love you.”
They said that Teiresias was very old indeed, and that he had lived part of his life, an entire lifetime, as a woman, so that he knew what it was like to be both sexes. Some even said that he was still double sexed. Of that Manaen could not say and certainly could not see. They had all heard of none of the conversation between the prophet and the king. The King demanded what caused the plague and Teiresias said the Lord of the Sun caused it because there was evil in the land.
The King demanded what the evil was and the prophet said not to press, but by the end of the day he did and had learned that the king, far from being a foreigner was the scion of the royal house. The queen, much younger than her first husband, had brought her first born son by the old king to an oracle, learning this boy would be his father’s death and bed his own mother. Oddly enough, to the people of Thebes, the first seemed worst than the second. But now it turned out that King Oepipus was the very one who had killed the old king on the road in a fit of pique, and then come to the city marrying a young, childless queen, thirteen years his elder.
When he learned it, he stabbed out his eyes and it seemed liked horror after horror rolled out of that palace. He had been king, tall ,beautiful, wonderful, and now he was blinded and bent over. He left his city with his daughters, and for a long time was gone. In the end, as he wished, Creon, his brother in law and uncle became the king. He took advantage of the shock of the city, and it seemed the age of gold Thebes had lived in darkened to bronze. Then came the year when Marophon had his first marriage, and this was the year we began to be divided, for he willingly entered the service of King Creon, though my father would not. My father said, “Hold your tongue and wait for a better day.” We did not rebel, but we did not honor the power hungry tyrant who had used grief to gain a throne.
Before this, Creon had ruled seven years until the time the princesses returned with the news that Oedipus was dead. Because Marophon sided with the King, when the Assembly eventually rouses itself from sleep and decided that one of the sons of Oepidus should rule and that the curse of incest had made them more and not less royal, to spite them, Creon insisted on having his say as to the heir and appointed the younger and the one closest to him, Eteocles. The coronation was held without ease, for Prince Polyneices had already left the city with those loyal to him and among them was my father Titus and my older brother, Ajax. It took a year to gather an army and over that year, while I stepped into the run the family business, never at ease because our traditional lack of approval had turned into outright rebelling, we waited for the day when seven armies came against the seven gates of the city, and things would have been just, and they would have been better for our family if Polyneices had won, but he lost by stalemate, for in the end, the two princes killed each other. Polyneices had a daughter, but she was back in Attika with his wife, and now Creon again took up the kingship. He said he did so reluctantly, but there is something dishonest about a man who does everything with great and reluctant honor, something false about one who takes on glory, stating, “It is because I must.”
Polyneices died in battle, along with but Titus Anaxionade died by execution The fortunes the Anaxionade kept were from Manaen’s mother’s people. Though some were apt to forget, she was of an Agae family. They had been very poor, and so the wealth they held, and were reluctant to share, and come from Manaen’s father and grandfather. Phocis Anaxionade saw not only her husband’s death, but watched as her sister and brother turned their backs as much as they could. Ajax had died in battle as well, making Manaen the permanent head of the family. He kept the house and the servants, but also gained the shame, or rather, the name of outcast.
“For I must say there was no shame,” Manaen declared, remembering this in the bee loud garden.
Ah… And Marophon, who had distanced himself from me, now avoided me completely.
MORE TOMORROW
PART ONE
AWAKENING
αφύπνιση
Thebes is famous for such figures as Cadmos, Herakles, Oepidus and the God Iacchus himself, and certainly many cities have dramas surrounding mythological families such as the Atreide of Mykenae, but without a doubt the most important family to the history of Thebes and the strength-ening of the northeastern lands is the Anaxionade, and no one was more crucial to their rise and the rise of Thebes than Manaen Anaxionades.
from -A Brief History of Ellix
by Photeus Nikias
CHAPTER ONE
THE HOUSE OF ANAXION
Οικοσ Αναχιον
MANAEN’S MOTHER STILL SAYS, “Oh yes, you remember… this,” or “Do you remember that?” Or, “Yes you have been to that place, seen that thing,” when regarding something which happened when he was a babe in arms, a toddler. Manaen Anaxion can barely remember a thing before his fifth birthday,and that would have been the year the old king died. He had been exiled years before, the year of the sickness, which was the same year as Manaen’s birth. Later stories told of how that king came, ridding the people of Thebes of another plague, a great sphinx, a lion with the head of a woman or, if you will, a woman with the body of a lion, and wings. She had sat on a rock before the gates of the city, riddling men, and if the man could not guess her riddle, he died. Correct that. She killed him.
The city of Thebes had seven gates, and so Manaen had always wondered why people simply wouldn’t have taken another gate. But the sphinx had wings so, one imagines, she would have flown to whatever gate people went.
Somehow, the king before the old king, the really old king, had managed to leave the city, seeking an oracle or a savior, and while on the road he was slain. More bad news. Now, the city of Thebes is old, and over the years there were many kings and they had sons and daughters and so, throughout the city were the Noble Houses, and the old king, ruling from the last noble house had wed a queen of another noble House, the House of Naxticyon, and when the king was known to be dead, then his queen and her brother ruled as lord and lady protectors of the city. The queen’s brother would have, in time, gone to the council to be declared king, but there were other noble families and it would have been a long fight for a title he didn’t need. Blessedly, the fight was curtailed when the Prince of Daurs came.
“I have heard it said,” Manaen told his son, Mykon, “and I believe, that rather than fighting the sphinx, he was the one with the sphinx. Some have said that it was Prince Oedipus, the son of the king and queen of Daurs, who arrived in Thebes with his sphinx and put down the true enemy, the bandits surrounding the city. One would think all of this was lost in history, and not a thing that had happened when my mother was a girl.”
“Then she would know,” the curly haired handsome boy decided.
His father shook his head.
“She could not tell you the truth. She was just a girl, and little children have other things to think about than kings and queens, and little children believe the tales their elders tell them.”
“As I believe what you say, Father?” the boy grinned at him coyly, curling his legs under him. Mykon was long limbed even then, with smooth skin like old ivory and thick curly hair touched with bronze. His father, darker, with southern blood, smiled ruefull and said, “Ah, but I will try to tell as much of the truth as I know.
“Oedipus was tall and elegant, a king in his own right, my father said, destined to rule the far off city of Daurs. And this was why my family loved him. Unlike the other families of note, we are not from Thebes. We were respected and noted, but still foreign. My grandfather had come from Axum, far to the south, to live as a merchant, and my father had become even greater, marrying a woman of an old family, begetting my brother, me and your aunt Antha. Though we faired well enough, it was known that there were several families ahead of us, first the Noble Families, the cadet branches descended from kings and queen and whom, when one house died out, gathered to elect a new king from amongst themselves. Beyond them were the very oldest families, Thebans from the very beginning, divided into two equal groups, by now so intermarried it barely mattered. The Sparti, often mighty warriors, and the Agae. Some were quite wealthy and some lived in collapsed houses, properties crumbling about them, clinging to their names. Still they were descended from the founders, the pure stock of Thebes. Wealthy as we were, and though we had come here in the days of my grandfather, we were called mercoi, foreigners, and I imagined as long as we bore my grandfather’s name we always would be.”
He stopped talking.
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“What came next?”
“Oh… you should not always humor me,” Manaen said. “A man should not talk to much and bend his son’s ear. Get up. Stretch yourself.”
“Will you come to the bath with me after I practice with my sword?”
“You will attend your mathematics with Axatratus,” Manaen said, rising, “and then you will practice fighting. I will not have my Anaxionade son grow into a stupid soldier. Be a soldier, but not a stupid one.”
Mykon lauged and ran off and looking at the handsome boy, Manaen thought, “That is his mother and her clan. That is not me, surely, that gave him such beauty, beauty like a girl’s almost.”
While his son got up, Manaen continued talking to himself.
“But in these days, Oepidus himself was mercoi, his handsome sons, Polynieces and Eteocles, his daughters, Terpsichore and Antiope as well. We from Axum and the other mercoi families held our heads up with more pride than we ever had before, and the star of our family, the House of Anaxeon, rose higher.”
And then had come that year when Manaen was a babe in a cracle, when disaster came to Thebes. Nothing grew and the sun was hot upon the land, rivers shriveled and now, toward the coming of a blighted autumn, plague entered the city. As the old king before him had done, so King Oedipus sent men out to find a seer and so Teiresias came.
Years later, Manaen had wondered how they found the seer.
“He is a witch,” Marophon had said, “So he will know he is needed.”
“Careful with that word,” Manaen had warned. “My people revere the men and women of power. They even say Teiresias is of Axum, like me.”
Marophon laughed at his darker, shorter, stockier friend in that way which sometimes irritated Manaen. Marophon, so sure of himself, bright eyed, blue eyed, dark curling hair on his head.
“You are no more of Axum than I am!” he said.
Manaen said nothing. Marophon was ever proud of being of the Sparti on one side and the Agae on the other, a first man of the city, tall and handsome and Manaen had to admit that in those days he was still in awe of him, surprised to have him for a friend. Manaen took great pride and being Axumi, and Marophon often forgot until he had overstepped himself, and so then he looked on Manaen nervously, grabbing his shoulder and shaking it.
“Come on, now,” he said, “You know I love you.”
They said that Teiresias was very old indeed, and that he had lived part of his life, an entire lifetime, as a woman, so that he knew what it was like to be both sexes. Some even said that he was still double sexed. Of that Manaen could not say and certainly could not see. They had all heard of none of the conversation between the prophet and the king. The King demanded what caused the plague and Teiresias said the Lord of the Sun caused it because there was evil in the land.
The King demanded what the evil was and the prophet said not to press, but by the end of the day he did and had learned that the king, far from being a foreigner was the scion of the royal house. The queen, much younger than her first husband, had brought her first born son by the old king to an oracle, learning this boy would be his father’s death and bed his own mother. Oddly enough, to the people of Thebes, the first seemed worst than the second. But now it turned out that King Oepipus was the very one who had killed the old king on the road in a fit of pique, and then come to the city marrying a young, childless queen, thirteen years his elder.
When he learned it, he stabbed out his eyes and it seemed liked horror after horror rolled out of that palace. He had been king, tall ,beautiful, wonderful, and now he was blinded and bent over. He left his city with his daughters, and for a long time was gone. In the end, as he wished, Creon, his brother in law and uncle became the king. He took advantage of the shock of the city, and it seemed the age of gold Thebes had lived in darkened to bronze. Then came the year when Marophon had his first marriage, and this was the year we began to be divided, for he willingly entered the service of King Creon, though my father would not. My father said, “Hold your tongue and wait for a better day.” We did not rebel, but we did not honor the power hungry tyrant who had used grief to gain a throne.
Before this, Creon had ruled seven years until the time the princesses returned with the news that Oedipus was dead. Because Marophon sided with the King, when the Assembly eventually rouses itself from sleep and decided that one of the sons of Oepidus should rule and that the curse of incest had made them more and not less royal, to spite them, Creon insisted on having his say as to the heir and appointed the younger and the one closest to him, Eteocles. The coronation was held without ease, for Prince Polyneices had already left the city with those loyal to him and among them was my father Titus and my older brother, Ajax. It took a year to gather an army and over that year, while I stepped into the run the family business, never at ease because our traditional lack of approval had turned into outright rebelling, we waited for the day when seven armies came against the seven gates of the city, and things would have been just, and they would have been better for our family if Polyneices had won, but he lost by stalemate, for in the end, the two princes killed each other. Polyneices had a daughter, but she was back in Attika with his wife, and now Creon again took up the kingship. He said he did so reluctantly, but there is something dishonest about a man who does everything with great and reluctant honor, something false about one who takes on glory, stating, “It is because I must.”
Polyneices died in battle, along with but Titus Anaxionade died by execution The fortunes the Anaxionade kept were from Manaen’s mother’s people. Though some were apt to forget, she was of an Agae family. They had been very poor, and so the wealth they held, and were reluctant to share, and come from Manaen’s father and grandfather. Phocis Anaxionade saw not only her husband’s death, but watched as her sister and brother turned their backs as much as they could. Ajax had died in battle as well, making Manaen the permanent head of the family. He kept the house and the servants, but also gained the shame, or rather, the name of outcast.
“For I must say there was no shame,” Manaen declared, remembering this in the bee loud garden.
Ah… And Marophon, who had distanced himself from me, now avoided me completely.
MORE TOMORROW
