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Perspectives on Kingship
There exists no more universal marker of Asiatic civilization than this, the Royal Game. All who read this work know of its grandeur and sophistication, and we know the civilizing of Europa continues apace because the most cultured among them now too play Shatranja, Xatarana as it has been called by the Hellenes. I shall for a time describe its history, as all thinking Asiatic peoples should be aware of this marvelous game’s origins, particularly those coming from barbarous stock who aim to elevate themselves and their progeny to the heights of Asian sophistication.
Shatranja comes from the lands of the Indos and Gange, which though not part of Asia is of a kind with it. It is a land of wisdom both subtle and ancient, ancient beyond the span of man’s measure of time. The Royal Game is but one of the exquisite gifts to the world that my ancestor’s homeland has provided to the civilized world. It originated from a region famous from India like no others, the region around the city of Ojain, Ozaine to the Hellenes, the motherland of Agnemitra the Great King of Asia. Being the most civilized part of India it attracted the greatest amount of wise people, advising the splendid kings that ruled from Ojain. One such person who is now, at last, known to Hellenes is the great Chanakya, and it was he who first devised the game of Shatranja. He, advisor to the king Mitrasena who was the father of Agnemitra, established the rules of the game and told it to the king. He established the board of eight by eight squares, each square measuring three angula on all sides. He created the division of pieces so as to be an accurate tool for considering military strategy, and so created the Archers, Boats, Horsemen, Elephants, Minister, and King. The Boats were, in ancient times, sometimes known as Guards, and the Horsemen as Chariots, but their movements and distinguishing features have not been altered across the long centuries. Being noble and intelligent Mitrasena and his advisor did not require different colours or flags to indicate the pieces’ ownership, they were able to keep track of the game state with memory alone, but the game was soon spread to those of less subtle arts, and they did require visual indication of the two different sides as present in Shatranja. This has now become the normal practice, and the art of crafting differentiated chess sets has become one of the most exquisite products of Asia in all its many countries and regions.
Agnemitra, so noble, learned, and respectful towards his father, was taught the Royal Game, beginning its tradition of transmission from one King to the next. When he began his indomitable conquest of Asia from the corrupt Achaemenids he took his nobler arts with them, enriching Asia with a new cultivar of civilization and restoring its vigorous health. Among those noble arts was the art of Shatranja, which he shared with those kings and rulers in Asia and elsewhere that he found to be civilized, cultured men. In this way the baser but rousable races of the western world were slowly suckled to the milk of true civilization, resulting in the far more equitable situation of our present day. Even now the finest Shatranja craftsmen are to be found in Kypros and Kyrenaika, and if only those more pessimistic Asians in the past had known that the Hellenes would one day cast aside their barbarism for all time and stand alongside them as equals. Agnemitra duly passed on the game to his own son, Krishnamitra, who would become his successor as Great King, and he to his own sons Pushyamitra and Mitradatta who would both become Great Kings themselves. The days of the line of Agnemitra are passed now, but they remain in our memory as the most noble and excellent of kings of Asia until the coming of the present dynasty from Imera, who once more reinvigorated Asia from one of its extreme quarters and rule with wisdom from Amida. What more fitting legacy could there be to represent the eternal gift of India to Asia than the Royal Game, and what greater demonstration of the Amidani dynasty’s right to rule than their world renowned mastery of Shatranja.
For those young or previously ignorant enough to be unaware of the rules of Shatranja, Chanakya’s game, has the following rules. Each army is arranged on opposite sides of the board, occupying two raji in their entirety. At the front of each army are the eight Archers. They are the mass of the army, who protects its advance and screens it against charges. They may move one raji forward in each turn, and if another Archer is in his way then that which advances removes the other Archer from the battlefield. They may not do this to the greater pieces, which Archers can only capture by flanking. This is the one exception to their otherwise forward movement, the only rationale by which an Archer may move one square left or right along a raji rather than to the next one ahead. Then next come the Boats, found at either end of their raji behind the Archers. Boats, being swift, may move any number of raji ahead if they are not obstructed by a piece, or any number of spaces along a raji. They may take a piece of any kind along this range of movement. They are enormously manoeuvrable, as boats are, but they must be used carefully as they cannot bypass other pieces, and are trapped behind the Archers at the start. The act of allowing their movement is named ‘opening the dock’ for this reason. Next are the Horsemen. Their swift mounts enable them to move up to two ranji ahead, or in such a fashion as to move one ranji forward and then one space along the ranji. Any piece which sits on the second square may be removed from the battlefield by the Horsemen. They may also bypass a piece which seems to block them in order to complete this move, and they are used to penetrate the great regiments of Archers on the board, though they must be used carefully lest they be flanked and cut off by the enemy infantry. Next are the Elephants, which are the most difficult piece to utilise correctly- they ordinarily move one space in any direction, including diagonally, taking any piece found in this arc of movement. But, once during the battle, an Elephant may move as many spaces in a particular direction as his master likes. Thus Elephants can be the most devastating attackers of all the pieces, though to take advantage of this they must be directed with great care and timing. Then we come to the Minister, who is capable of two forms of movement. He may move two squares in any diagonal direction, and may capture any piece found in that range of movement. He may also choose to forgo this ability in order to move both himself and the King beside him one raji ahead. This move may only be utilised if the Minister and King are on the same raji, next to one another. In this way the Minister serves both the Kingdom and his King directly. The King may move on his own, and being the most fearsome warrior can move one square in any direction like the Elephant. The King is also too noble to be captured like any other piece. However, he is also no fool, avoiding death if he can, and so he must move out of the way if a piece would be able to capture his piece, as that is putting him in danger. The game is lost for the player who is no longer able to move the King away from such dangers, and whose Kingdom is now at the mercy of his opponent.
Those who wish to learn the full subtle arts of this game are advised to practice a great deal, for as a blade is sharpened a mind must be kept keen by practice and regular use. But students are also advised to consult the Great Games, those most well fought Shatranja matches which are recorded below in their full subtlety and arts. Learn to appreciate the true mastery of the game, come to understand why a certain piece is used thusly and another is used another way, why certain Archers are chosen to be moved at the start of the game by their masters above others. The more cultured the mind, the more civilized the stock, the more potential the student has for becoming a true master of the game. Take heed, then, of the poor man who displays a total mastery of Shatranja, make him your advisor or your minister, or do anything but let him wallow in the cruel fate that he has somehow been consigned to by misfortune or malice on the part of others. Quality will always tell, and there is no better way to quickly find the quality of a man than to challenge him to the Royal Game.
What is it that drives the hubris, the unnatural lusts that make a man disposed to become a king over others, a father who treats his children as his slaves? For those of us born with the virtues that Hellas inculcated in her sons and daughters, who understand what liberty and proper conduct between human beings entails, it seems almost impossible to imagine. What monsters could be born into the human race, how could they remain human I hear you ask? The answer is that a King, such a wretched and avaricious creature as he, cannot be born, he must be made. Nothing whatsoever kingly about a person is determined by their birth, not their fitness to be a king nor their ability to become one. Who is he made by? He is made from the immoral, transgressive lusts of his parents and family, who goad him to seeking dominion, pleasures of all kinds, and tell him that this is what the Gods wish for him. The blasphemy of this is impossible to measure, the Gods are not using kings as their instrument of rule or division of humans, kings are a form of punishment on humankind meted out by the gods, and only the deserving are spared their presence. They are not marked as blessed, they are marked by the kakodaimones, who join forces with their parents in corrupting them to perverted, destructive ends. They are the rats that infiltrate the polis who, if allowed to bloat and become convinced of their own power, will devour all other things in their path. As rats chew away at barrels so do kings chew at polis walls.
How then do such creatures become kings, those so twisted against nature as to wish to do so? They do so with all the basest measures known to man, the threat of violence, humiliation, bribery and gold. They forge armies and mint followers, relying also on those other humans too crude and stupid to even understand what they are looking at and who they are supporting. They become kings because other men allow such men to take what is not theirs. The size of the Akhaimenid domains is a measure of the weakness and corruption that lies at the heart of Asia, that so many men would capitulate, would allow themselves to watch the rape of their communities and families. The true Hellene is of a fundamentally different character altogether to such people, which is why it so hard for us to understand them and why they would desire a King to rule over them if they are such a just and noble people. I tell you that any ethnos upon this earth which so strongly desires a king has no justice in their awareness, only a natural desire for servitude, slavery, and the compulsion to abdicate their existence as true human beings. Treasure the barbarians who tolerate no kings among their presence, for no matter how savage such peoples are they are more civilized, more ethical than any civilized people who willingly call a man king, or a woman queen.
The sheer numbers of such indolence-ridden people as support these kings leads me to but one solution- the cleansing from the world of those with such instincts, in the name of the Gods high on Olympos. We grant them mercy from their own broken nature by doing so, respite from their cracked, half-baked forms. It is a duty of every right thinking Hellene to do this thing, in concert with every right thinking barbarian in necessary. The chaff shall be removed, leaving only those people, constitutions, and ethneis which carry sustenance. The Persians are such chaff, and their rotten forms threaten to suffocate the life out of our homeland. Drive them back, with all strength in your arms and faith in your Gods, drive them into the sea, the welcoming arms of Poseidon. Leave no Persian alive to spread the disease, cut off the infected material, heal the body of humankind.
It came to pass that the Dikaiotes wished an alliance with one king among the Messapi friendly to the Hellenes. But Kimon of Sybaris would not let this come to pass, for the older he grew the more he desired to destroy all monarkhia states, and to kill all kings. For his own polis to consider treating with a king was, for him, unacceptable. Being a people of free speech, as the Athenians had been, the Dikaiaotes were prepared to accept this opinion, but Kimon was not satisfied with simply sharing his opinion to those in an immediate area, his friends, or even simply discussing them in the Assembly. He did all in his power to sabotage talks with this Messapi king, physically restraining people to delay them, causing embarassing incidents, launching invectives at the Messapi king’s ambassadors. Given that this ignored the stated will of the Dikaiaotes, and the other poleis who formed the Italiote League, this was no longer considered an issue of sharing an opinion, and Kimon was arrested. His trial, it is said, was one where the jurors were disposed to division on the issue, and where they would likely have ruled in his favour. But his behaviour in the trial, featuring obscenities scarcely imaginable to jurors in such an environment, turned the jury against him definitively, and his rage at them grew so great and so uncontrolled that their chosen sentence was execution. Despite the nature of his behaviour and his transgressions there remained a sizeable portion of Dikaiotes who agreed with his views, though it was not considered prudent to air such views and thus this was not well known to the general Dikaiot population at the time. These who agreed with Kimon were enraged at the decision to prosecute him, let alone his execution, and so began to ensure that the compositions of Kimon, such as his speeches, poems, plays, and historia, became more widely known among the Dikaot population, and at this time at which Herodotos of Halikarnassos writes they have become very popular indeed.
Scores of men, across all peoples, have claimed to be kings, to be born and justly appointed rulers of men. Many of them were strong, and some even wise, it is clear that great destinies were determined for them by the Gods. But to be a true king, a king such as the Rasna possess, is to be more than marked for an unusual destiny, to be more than a great warrior or a wise minister, to be more than elevated by riches, pomp, and ceremony. The chosen of Tinia, son of Uni, he is the only real and true king among all the others, and one of their number is one day destined to rule the world. He is the will of the Gods made manifest, and this is not something that can be taught or imitated. Only the chosen of Tinia are marked by lightning, the champions of vaulted sky that sound the Gods’ thunder across all the realms of men. He, the King of the Rasna, is the crashing of relentless sea, the sudden onset of storms, the immovable mountain. No opponent shall master him, no foe shall delay him, no obstacle shall keep him from his destiny. Look at what destiny has determined that the chosen of Tinia shall achieve- the great union of all Rasna, who are become the children of Tinia and Uni, the defence of our lands against the depredations of northern barbarians, the conquest of rich lands not controlled by the Rasna for many centuries hence. Not the King of Persia could stand in the way of the chosen of Tinia, not all the Kings of India, not all the cities of the Hellenes standing together as one. His armies are as Myrmidones, invincible and peerless. Never before had we, the Rasna, dreamed of such lofty destiny, but now every man, woman, and child born to the Rasna knows our birthright is the world, that our borders are the seas and stars, that our hand stretches out and takes whatever we aim to grasp. Such power is this is only possible with the leadership of Tinia’s chosen representative on Earth, the power of god-elect kingship harnessed. No Rasna shall ever again accept a false king, however destined they be, nor any foreign master. Thus we truly know ourselves to be the superiors to the Hellenes, who despite their ancient wisdoms have remained a conquered people despite all their toings and froings. It shall be the task of the chosen of Tinia to redeem the Hellenes, that is his destiny, and the destiny of the Rasna.
See the Hellenes, and how they constantly argue among themselves on the matter of constitutions- which form of particular government is to be preferred, as though all exist at the expense of others. Realise then reader that this turmoil, this angst, is one that can be experienced by cultures that are less comfortable in themselves, less attuned to the reality of life and instead holding to impossible ethics, not to mention false ones. Witness that the Persians understood this too, for despite rule by king they also retained other ancient measures of rulership alongside their king, and were comfortable with mixed and diverse constitutions existing in their dependencies. Perfidious were the Persians, cruel and conquest hungry, but yet this understanding was granted to them, as it has been granted to those who call themselves the children of Qart-Hadast. Acknowledge that the Qarthadastim relieved their own kings of rulership but also that they would continue to call on kings during emergencies, and that they were happy to have kings as allies or servants during their time of dominion. This lesson have we, the citizens of Maziga, learned from the Qarthadastim, and adopted for our own, possessing a mixed constitution. Behold that such constitutions are not unusual, for they have been utilised by such famed peoples of the Tyrian Sea as the Messenioi, the subjects of the Battidai, and even the Spartiates utilised a mixed constitution, though mentioning these last Hellenes among scholars of Asia is rather akin to a meeting of sheep where one decides to casually bring up a ravenous wolf. Maziga possesses a perfect balance of monarch, assembly, and recognition of talent, combining the best qualities of our predecessors with the innate sense of justice bestowed upon the ‘Mazigen. Whilst all peoples strive for their own freedom and quality of life it is this, our ability to create a balanced constitution fair above all others, that shows why we are the worthy successors to the dominion of the Qarthadastim. A constitution that is solely of one kind or another, where its people refuse to even consider measures which could be construed as belonging to the other kinds of constitution, such a constitution is doomed to collapse, either from internal pressure or from the superior manoueverings of more flexible peoples around them. Not only that, such systems are strengthened by immorality among their rulers to the detriment of that country’s overall power, whereas with a mixed constitution virtue is encouraged, leading to a healthier motherland in the first instance.
Let us, however, briefly consider those peoples who lack constitutions, those called barbarians. Note that they, uncivilized and rudimentary as they are, still form an innate understanding of government, and can be taught the constitutional form of conduct, showing that all humans with intellect available to them have a formative instinct to seek government, and to understand good government when it is presented to them. Not only that but, ignorant as they are, such barbarians can themselves create something not dissimilar to a mixed constitution, whereby multiple crude institutions are balanced against one another by fear of mutual annihilation. What they lack is an understanding of kingship beyond the idea of the strongest member of their community, which is not kingship as understood by the ‘Mazigen, nor even that as understood by Indians, Hellenes, and other civilized peoples of the Tyrian Sea. We understand kingship to be sacred direction, that kings are for more than military leadership but overseeing the health of the citizen body, and directing their subjects away from destructive conflicts amongst themselves, and moral leadership. In this they are supported by such institutions as we call part of Demokratia, whereby the morality of the king is supplemented by wisdom over the long and short term; if the king is the guardian of the motherland’s health then the assemblies and other instruments of demokratia are what produce the movements of the body, and a number of the instructions for what the body aims to do, understanding its hungers and passions more deeply than its ills. In this manner the body behaves as an entire organism, rather than an unthinking wretch or a cerebral recluse staggering through the world one struggle at a time.
Μηδίζω! THE WORLD OF ACHAEMENID HELLAS
CHAPTER 3:XSHAHYAM or BASILEIA
EXTRACT FROM MITRADORA’S BOOK OF GAMES
THE ROYAL GAME, ALSO KNOWN AS SHATRANJA OR XATARANA
CHAPTER 3:XSHAHYAM or BASILEIA
EXTRACT FROM MITRADORA’S BOOK OF GAMES
THE ROYAL GAME, ALSO KNOWN AS SHATRANJA OR XATARANA
There exists no more universal marker of Asiatic civilization than this, the Royal Game. All who read this work know of its grandeur and sophistication, and we know the civilizing of Europa continues apace because the most cultured among them now too play Shatranja, Xatarana as it has been called by the Hellenes. I shall for a time describe its history, as all thinking Asiatic peoples should be aware of this marvelous game’s origins, particularly those coming from barbarous stock who aim to elevate themselves and their progeny to the heights of Asian sophistication.
Shatranja comes from the lands of the Indos and Gange, which though not part of Asia is of a kind with it. It is a land of wisdom both subtle and ancient, ancient beyond the span of man’s measure of time. The Royal Game is but one of the exquisite gifts to the world that my ancestor’s homeland has provided to the civilized world. It originated from a region famous from India like no others, the region around the city of Ojain, Ozaine to the Hellenes, the motherland of Agnemitra the Great King of Asia. Being the most civilized part of India it attracted the greatest amount of wise people, advising the splendid kings that ruled from Ojain. One such person who is now, at last, known to Hellenes is the great Chanakya, and it was he who first devised the game of Shatranja. He, advisor to the king Mitrasena who was the father of Agnemitra, established the rules of the game and told it to the king. He established the board of eight by eight squares, each square measuring three angula on all sides. He created the division of pieces so as to be an accurate tool for considering military strategy, and so created the Archers, Boats, Horsemen, Elephants, Minister, and King. The Boats were, in ancient times, sometimes known as Guards, and the Horsemen as Chariots, but their movements and distinguishing features have not been altered across the long centuries. Being noble and intelligent Mitrasena and his advisor did not require different colours or flags to indicate the pieces’ ownership, they were able to keep track of the game state with memory alone, but the game was soon spread to those of less subtle arts, and they did require visual indication of the two different sides as present in Shatranja. This has now become the normal practice, and the art of crafting differentiated chess sets has become one of the most exquisite products of Asia in all its many countries and regions.
Agnemitra, so noble, learned, and respectful towards his father, was taught the Royal Game, beginning its tradition of transmission from one King to the next. When he began his indomitable conquest of Asia from the corrupt Achaemenids he took his nobler arts with them, enriching Asia with a new cultivar of civilization and restoring its vigorous health. Among those noble arts was the art of Shatranja, which he shared with those kings and rulers in Asia and elsewhere that he found to be civilized, cultured men. In this way the baser but rousable races of the western world were slowly suckled to the milk of true civilization, resulting in the far more equitable situation of our present day. Even now the finest Shatranja craftsmen are to be found in Kypros and Kyrenaika, and if only those more pessimistic Asians in the past had known that the Hellenes would one day cast aside their barbarism for all time and stand alongside them as equals. Agnemitra duly passed on the game to his own son, Krishnamitra, who would become his successor as Great King, and he to his own sons Pushyamitra and Mitradatta who would both become Great Kings themselves. The days of the line of Agnemitra are passed now, but they remain in our memory as the most noble and excellent of kings of Asia until the coming of the present dynasty from Imera, who once more reinvigorated Asia from one of its extreme quarters and rule with wisdom from Amida. What more fitting legacy could there be to represent the eternal gift of India to Asia than the Royal Game, and what greater demonstration of the Amidani dynasty’s right to rule than their world renowned mastery of Shatranja.
For those young or previously ignorant enough to be unaware of the rules of Shatranja, Chanakya’s game, has the following rules. Each army is arranged on opposite sides of the board, occupying two raji in their entirety. At the front of each army are the eight Archers. They are the mass of the army, who protects its advance and screens it against charges. They may move one raji forward in each turn, and if another Archer is in his way then that which advances removes the other Archer from the battlefield. They may not do this to the greater pieces, which Archers can only capture by flanking. This is the one exception to their otherwise forward movement, the only rationale by which an Archer may move one square left or right along a raji rather than to the next one ahead. Then next come the Boats, found at either end of their raji behind the Archers. Boats, being swift, may move any number of raji ahead if they are not obstructed by a piece, or any number of spaces along a raji. They may take a piece of any kind along this range of movement. They are enormously manoeuvrable, as boats are, but they must be used carefully as they cannot bypass other pieces, and are trapped behind the Archers at the start. The act of allowing their movement is named ‘opening the dock’ for this reason. Next are the Horsemen. Their swift mounts enable them to move up to two ranji ahead, or in such a fashion as to move one ranji forward and then one space along the ranji. Any piece which sits on the second square may be removed from the battlefield by the Horsemen. They may also bypass a piece which seems to block them in order to complete this move, and they are used to penetrate the great regiments of Archers on the board, though they must be used carefully lest they be flanked and cut off by the enemy infantry. Next are the Elephants, which are the most difficult piece to utilise correctly- they ordinarily move one space in any direction, including diagonally, taking any piece found in this arc of movement. But, once during the battle, an Elephant may move as many spaces in a particular direction as his master likes. Thus Elephants can be the most devastating attackers of all the pieces, though to take advantage of this they must be directed with great care and timing. Then we come to the Minister, who is capable of two forms of movement. He may move two squares in any diagonal direction, and may capture any piece found in that range of movement. He may also choose to forgo this ability in order to move both himself and the King beside him one raji ahead. This move may only be utilised if the Minister and King are on the same raji, next to one another. In this way the Minister serves both the Kingdom and his King directly. The King may move on his own, and being the most fearsome warrior can move one square in any direction like the Elephant. The King is also too noble to be captured like any other piece. However, he is also no fool, avoiding death if he can, and so he must move out of the way if a piece would be able to capture his piece, as that is putting him in danger. The game is lost for the player who is no longer able to move the King away from such dangers, and whose Kingdom is now at the mercy of his opponent.
Those who wish to learn the full subtle arts of this game are advised to practice a great deal, for as a blade is sharpened a mind must be kept keen by practice and regular use. But students are also advised to consult the Great Games, those most well fought Shatranja matches which are recorded below in their full subtlety and arts. Learn to appreciate the true mastery of the game, come to understand why a certain piece is used thusly and another is used another way, why certain Archers are chosen to be moved at the start of the game by their masters above others. The more cultured the mind, the more civilized the stock, the more potential the student has for becoming a true master of the game. Take heed, then, of the poor man who displays a total mastery of Shatranja, make him your advisor or your minister, or do anything but let him wallow in the cruel fate that he has somehow been consigned to by misfortune or malice on the part of others. Quality will always tell, and there is no better way to quickly find the quality of a man than to challenge him to the Royal Game.
EXTRACT FROM THE PERSIANS BY KIMON
ON KINGSHIP
ON KINGSHIP
What is it that drives the hubris, the unnatural lusts that make a man disposed to become a king over others, a father who treats his children as his slaves? For those of us born with the virtues that Hellas inculcated in her sons and daughters, who understand what liberty and proper conduct between human beings entails, it seems almost impossible to imagine. What monsters could be born into the human race, how could they remain human I hear you ask? The answer is that a King, such a wretched and avaricious creature as he, cannot be born, he must be made. Nothing whatsoever kingly about a person is determined by their birth, not their fitness to be a king nor their ability to become one. Who is he made by? He is made from the immoral, transgressive lusts of his parents and family, who goad him to seeking dominion, pleasures of all kinds, and tell him that this is what the Gods wish for him. The blasphemy of this is impossible to measure, the Gods are not using kings as their instrument of rule or division of humans, kings are a form of punishment on humankind meted out by the gods, and only the deserving are spared their presence. They are not marked as blessed, they are marked by the kakodaimones, who join forces with their parents in corrupting them to perverted, destructive ends. They are the rats that infiltrate the polis who, if allowed to bloat and become convinced of their own power, will devour all other things in their path. As rats chew away at barrels so do kings chew at polis walls.
How then do such creatures become kings, those so twisted against nature as to wish to do so? They do so with all the basest measures known to man, the threat of violence, humiliation, bribery and gold. They forge armies and mint followers, relying also on those other humans too crude and stupid to even understand what they are looking at and who they are supporting. They become kings because other men allow such men to take what is not theirs. The size of the Akhaimenid domains is a measure of the weakness and corruption that lies at the heart of Asia, that so many men would capitulate, would allow themselves to watch the rape of their communities and families. The true Hellene is of a fundamentally different character altogether to such people, which is why it so hard for us to understand them and why they would desire a King to rule over them if they are such a just and noble people. I tell you that any ethnos upon this earth which so strongly desires a king has no justice in their awareness, only a natural desire for servitude, slavery, and the compulsion to abdicate their existence as true human beings. Treasure the barbarians who tolerate no kings among their presence, for no matter how savage such peoples are they are more civilized, more ethical than any civilized people who willingly call a man king, or a woman queen.
The sheer numbers of such indolence-ridden people as support these kings leads me to but one solution- the cleansing from the world of those with such instincts, in the name of the Gods high on Olympos. We grant them mercy from their own broken nature by doing so, respite from their cracked, half-baked forms. It is a duty of every right thinking Hellene to do this thing, in concert with every right thinking barbarian in necessary. The chaff shall be removed, leaving only those people, constitutions, and ethneis which carry sustenance. The Persians are such chaff, and their rotten forms threaten to suffocate the life out of our homeland. Drive them back, with all strength in your arms and faith in your Gods, drive them into the sea, the welcoming arms of Poseidon. Leave no Persian alive to spread the disease, cut off the infected material, heal the body of humankind.
EXTRACT FROM HERODOTOS OF HALIKARNASSOS’ HISTORIA
ON KIMON OF SYBARIS
ON KIMON OF SYBARIS
It came to pass that the Dikaiotes wished an alliance with one king among the Messapi friendly to the Hellenes. But Kimon of Sybaris would not let this come to pass, for the older he grew the more he desired to destroy all monarkhia states, and to kill all kings. For his own polis to consider treating with a king was, for him, unacceptable. Being a people of free speech, as the Athenians had been, the Dikaiaotes were prepared to accept this opinion, but Kimon was not satisfied with simply sharing his opinion to those in an immediate area, his friends, or even simply discussing them in the Assembly. He did all in his power to sabotage talks with this Messapi king, physically restraining people to delay them, causing embarassing incidents, launching invectives at the Messapi king’s ambassadors. Given that this ignored the stated will of the Dikaiaotes, and the other poleis who formed the Italiote League, this was no longer considered an issue of sharing an opinion, and Kimon was arrested. His trial, it is said, was one where the jurors were disposed to division on the issue, and where they would likely have ruled in his favour. But his behaviour in the trial, featuring obscenities scarcely imaginable to jurors in such an environment, turned the jury against him definitively, and his rage at them grew so great and so uncontrolled that their chosen sentence was execution. Despite the nature of his behaviour and his transgressions there remained a sizeable portion of Dikaiotes who agreed with his views, though it was not considered prudent to air such views and thus this was not well known to the general Dikaiot population at the time. These who agreed with Kimon were enraged at the decision to prosecute him, let alone his execution, and so began to ensure that the compositions of Kimon, such as his speeches, poems, plays, and historia, became more widely known among the Dikaot population, and at this time at which Herodotos of Halikarnassos writes they have become very popular indeed.
AULE TINNA'S LITANY OF KINGSHIP
Scores of men, across all peoples, have claimed to be kings, to be born and justly appointed rulers of men. Many of them were strong, and some even wise, it is clear that great destinies were determined for them by the Gods. But to be a true king, a king such as the Rasna possess, is to be more than marked for an unusual destiny, to be more than a great warrior or a wise minister, to be more than elevated by riches, pomp, and ceremony. The chosen of Tinia, son of Uni, he is the only real and true king among all the others, and one of their number is one day destined to rule the world. He is the will of the Gods made manifest, and this is not something that can be taught or imitated. Only the chosen of Tinia are marked by lightning, the champions of vaulted sky that sound the Gods’ thunder across all the realms of men. He, the King of the Rasna, is the crashing of relentless sea, the sudden onset of storms, the immovable mountain. No opponent shall master him, no foe shall delay him, no obstacle shall keep him from his destiny. Look at what destiny has determined that the chosen of Tinia shall achieve- the great union of all Rasna, who are become the children of Tinia and Uni, the defence of our lands against the depredations of northern barbarians, the conquest of rich lands not controlled by the Rasna for many centuries hence. Not the King of Persia could stand in the way of the chosen of Tinia, not all the Kings of India, not all the cities of the Hellenes standing together as one. His armies are as Myrmidones, invincible and peerless. Never before had we, the Rasna, dreamed of such lofty destiny, but now every man, woman, and child born to the Rasna knows our birthright is the world, that our borders are the seas and stars, that our hand stretches out and takes whatever we aim to grasp. Such power is this is only possible with the leadership of Tinia’s chosen representative on Earth, the power of god-elect kingship harnessed. No Rasna shall ever again accept a false king, however destined they be, nor any foreign master. Thus we truly know ourselves to be the superiors to the Hellenes, who despite their ancient wisdoms have remained a conquered people despite all their toings and froings. It shall be the task of the chosen of Tinia to redeem the Hellenes, that is his destiny, and the destiny of the Rasna.
EXTRACT FROM AMASTA OF APPO’S HISTORIA
ON CONSTITUTIONS
ON CONSTITUTIONS
See the Hellenes, and how they constantly argue among themselves on the matter of constitutions- which form of particular government is to be preferred, as though all exist at the expense of others. Realise then reader that this turmoil, this angst, is one that can be experienced by cultures that are less comfortable in themselves, less attuned to the reality of life and instead holding to impossible ethics, not to mention false ones. Witness that the Persians understood this too, for despite rule by king they also retained other ancient measures of rulership alongside their king, and were comfortable with mixed and diverse constitutions existing in their dependencies. Perfidious were the Persians, cruel and conquest hungry, but yet this understanding was granted to them, as it has been granted to those who call themselves the children of Qart-Hadast. Acknowledge that the Qarthadastim relieved their own kings of rulership but also that they would continue to call on kings during emergencies, and that they were happy to have kings as allies or servants during their time of dominion. This lesson have we, the citizens of Maziga, learned from the Qarthadastim, and adopted for our own, possessing a mixed constitution. Behold that such constitutions are not unusual, for they have been utilised by such famed peoples of the Tyrian Sea as the Messenioi, the subjects of the Battidai, and even the Spartiates utilised a mixed constitution, though mentioning these last Hellenes among scholars of Asia is rather akin to a meeting of sheep where one decides to casually bring up a ravenous wolf. Maziga possesses a perfect balance of monarch, assembly, and recognition of talent, combining the best qualities of our predecessors with the innate sense of justice bestowed upon the ‘Mazigen. Whilst all peoples strive for their own freedom and quality of life it is this, our ability to create a balanced constitution fair above all others, that shows why we are the worthy successors to the dominion of the Qarthadastim. A constitution that is solely of one kind or another, where its people refuse to even consider measures which could be construed as belonging to the other kinds of constitution, such a constitution is doomed to collapse, either from internal pressure or from the superior manoueverings of more flexible peoples around them. Not only that, such systems are strengthened by immorality among their rulers to the detriment of that country’s overall power, whereas with a mixed constitution virtue is encouraged, leading to a healthier motherland in the first instance.
Let us, however, briefly consider those peoples who lack constitutions, those called barbarians. Note that they, uncivilized and rudimentary as they are, still form an innate understanding of government, and can be taught the constitutional form of conduct, showing that all humans with intellect available to them have a formative instinct to seek government, and to understand good government when it is presented to them. Not only that but, ignorant as they are, such barbarians can themselves create something not dissimilar to a mixed constitution, whereby multiple crude institutions are balanced against one another by fear of mutual annihilation. What they lack is an understanding of kingship beyond the idea of the strongest member of their community, which is not kingship as understood by the ‘Mazigen, nor even that as understood by Indians, Hellenes, and other civilized peoples of the Tyrian Sea. We understand kingship to be sacred direction, that kings are for more than military leadership but overseeing the health of the citizen body, and directing their subjects away from destructive conflicts amongst themselves, and moral leadership. In this they are supported by such institutions as we call part of Demokratia, whereby the morality of the king is supplemented by wisdom over the long and short term; if the king is the guardian of the motherland’s health then the assemblies and other instruments of demokratia are what produce the movements of the body, and a number of the instructions for what the body aims to do, understanding its hungers and passions more deeply than its ills. In this manner the body behaves as an entire organism, rather than an unthinking wretch or a cerebral recluse staggering through the world one struggle at a time.
- Daeres
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