Diomedes in Kyprios
By Gregory Michael Nixon
Audiobook Narrator: Simon de Denet
By Gregory Michael Nixon
Audiobook Narrator: Simon de Denet
Publication Date: November 19th, 2024
Publisher: Historium Press
Pages: 243 Pages
Genre: Mythico-Historical Fiction
This is a historically-based novel with authentic, mythic, and fictional characters interacting across the extraordinary panorama after the Fall of Troy and the Hittite Empire during the Bronze Age Collapse. Diomedes leads his Akhaians (Achaeans) to the Isle of Kyprios (now Cyprus) to meet his lost love, Lieia, the ex-queen of the Hittites. Kyprios is where the Peoples of the Sea have gathered before their final assaults on Canaan and Aigyptos (Egypt).
But Diomedes unexpectedly meets the avatar of the Goddess Aphrodite at her Temple in Paphos, the city of her birth. Will she take him from Lieia? Will his wanderings end, or will he head back to sea to seek redemption from the past in the further unknown? Aphrodite must also deal with the beautiful, impetuous youth, Adonis, who swears he would die for her.
The Bronze Age Collapse was a time of such chaos that empires fell, royalty was overthrown, palaces and temples were destroyed, and the hierarchy of the gods was doubted, yet people's self-reliance emerged like never before, and the ancient Great Goddess of the Cycles of Time, who had been suppressed, began to regain her former dominance.
Excerpt
“Months have gone by, and you have heard nothing from your supposed Ahhiyawa hero. Have you accepted that Diomedes never survived the Underworld cavern?”
Lieia looked down, thinking. Lilitu continued, “Lieia, you need to adjust to your new life. Lieia understood, knowing she could be made to suffer in more direct ways and perhaps might even benefit from an apparent friendship with her exotic and powerful jail-keeper.
“Adjust myself how?”
“We are now both high priestesses of Ishtar who trust each other. Ishtar demands our total devotion. Among us, she is not a goddess of motherhood or domesticity, but a goddess of war and carnal transcendence. We must share in certain private rituals, sometimes involving others, that do honour to Ishtar through sexual anguish and ecstasy—journeys through the dark world of the flesh that always end with the enlightenment of the soul. I have much to teach you.”
Having spoken so openly, Lieia realized that Lilitu was not making a suggestion but a demand. Lieia had no real choice in the matter, and she admitted to herself that adjustment would have many benefits. Once the keeper of the royal harem, Lieia was not without experience in the ways women pleasure each other, though now such playful activity was cloaked as serious ritual. Lieia was not repulsed but curious. Lilitu was surely as alluring as Ishtar herself. Though at first she felt no desire for the platinum-haired priestess, that changed as the ritual commenced.
“I am yours to command and yours to teach, O High Priestess. Shall we begin our devotions today?”
“Yes, O Queen. Personal slaves will arrive—you recall the two youths who have been attending you?—to purify us of our garments, bathe us together in rose water, then massage us in scented oils, after which we shall all engage each others’ bodies with the blessings of Ishtar.”
Soon Lieia succumbed to the enticements and eventually participated with shameless enthusiasm, which pleased the High Priestess greatly. Lieia felt no guilt, for the pleasures did not transport her soul into union as had those she had known with the man she loved. She knew that if Diomede lived he would have understood that circumstances were imposed upon her, and he already knew of her significant carnal energy.
Best of all, the High Priestess believed she now had Lieia in thrall and did indeed trust her to walk freely about Ishtar’s tower and even to stroll on the stone paths of Temple Hill, always followed by her two guards, of course.
That night when she was alone again, sipping a soothing, mildly narcotic drink under the moonlight, she reflected on recent events. She certainly did not fit the image of the princess imprisoned in a tower by an evil dragon, as it was told in Hatti children’s tales. For one thing, no prince was coming to rescue her. He had either been killed, abandoned her or awaited her on the nearby island. For another thing, the dragon may not be entirely evil, she smiled, for it sometimes shared its secret treasures of pleasure for all.
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Gregory Michael Nixon
Gregory M. Nixon is a retired university professor who, after spending his professional years publishing academic papers, was pleased to discover he still had an active imagination. He moved alone to a nice cottage overlooking magnificent Okanagan Lake in western Canada to create his mythico-historical novels set after the Trojan War and the fall of the Hittite Empire during the Bronze Age Collapse. Nigel, an outdoor cat, also sometimes lives with him.
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