CHAPTER TWO
THE FATHER DEION
Deion, the paleopatËr’s father, was born in the recently oppressed land of Dauleis. That small region lay west of the Lake Midlands, the heartland of later Boeotia and central Greece. Its western hillocks and winding vales lay separate from both theHigh Kingdom of Kadmeis (a precursor to Thebes) and Orchomenos, whose western verge of fertile basin drains into Lake Kopais. Deion became an itinerant man-at-arms as soon as he’d achieved proficiency. He became expert at light skirmishing by tactics of swift maneuver and covert strategy in hilly woodland warfare. He resettled first near Phokis, where he proved his prowess to the High Matriarch there, Lebadia (from whom an important plain later took its name). Her realm, despite its autonomy, was then a loyal protectorate of the High Kingdom of Kadmeis. At any call to arms from that quarter, she enjoined Deion’s caste of men-at-arms to Kadmeis’. For her fidelity to their imperious warrior ilk she won spoils’ apportionments off the High King Labdakos’ gains from warfare.
His realm, however, can be defined by reference to certain complications that attended his accession to power.
Many small but successful farming communities composed Dauleis together with her near neighbors. They had no matron plantation tradition such as Mentör would have known by that idiom. They were easily protected by small force, or they were easily recomposed after a few stray trespassers might trammel them. Quickly passed rampages made for resilience in the Dauleian people, and created a proclivity in her young men toward a proficiency at some weapon of choice.
Despite that resilience, the hit-and-miss tradition of intermittent wars had to end. Deion’s home community became utterly defenseless against new settlers who arrived as whole migrant families under belligerent clan leaders. The nomadic ways of their amalgamated tribes were too often in pursuit of permanent conquest. Formidable waves of conquerors, the equestrian champion Minyans paramount over all, were driving the established indigenes out of the north central mainland of the Greek Peninsula, compelling those clan leaders to render their people subjugate to conquests for permanent territorial gains.
The first waves of incursion had enjoined the displaced to inhabitants of the Upper Midlands, pushing the settled Aeolidans out of their transitory settlements after an earlier vast dislocatio
