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In Homeric Greek, “hero” (ἥρως, hḗrōs) refers to a man who fought (on either side) during the Trojan War. By the historical period, however, the word came to mean specifically a dead man, venerated and propitiated at his tomb or at a designated shrine, because his fame during life or his unusual manner of death gave him power to support and protect the living.

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the earliest written reference to hero-cult is attributed to Dracon, the Athenian lawgiver of the late seventh century BC, who prescribed that gods and local heroes should both be honoured according to ancestral custom. The custom, then, was already established, and there were multiple local heroes.[9] The written sources emphasise the importance of heroes’ tombs and the temenos or sanctuary, where chthonic rites appeased their spirits and induced them to continue to favour the people who looked to them as founders, of whom founding myths were related.

Source: Greek hero cult – Wikipedia

“In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two sets of genitals, and the remainder as one would imagine. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like acrobats going over and over with

Source: Plato’s Symposium 189a-193e: Aristophanes on the Nature of Love | a classical blog

In the beginning, things were a mess. Nobody knew really what was going on or why. Things just did stuff, or nothing. There were not really even things. Shapes had not been invented yet, and most of what was out there were formless blobs chaotically bumping into one another without rhyme or reason. Or worse, they were completely inert, no dynamic spark having been activated within them yet.

In actual fact, most of what we know today as ‘shapes’ were only invented relatively recently (some say discovered, under the assumption they have existed eternally). Most of pre-history can best be understood as Blobbist (i.e., Pre- or Proto-Shapist), and there even existed within later Shapist society a philosophical faction known as the Pure Formists, who looked back romantically to Blobbist Pre-History as a kind of Golden Age.

For those early ambulatory blobs (see also: Strollers), when a dynamic spark had been activated within, and under the call of which they became in turn dynamized, it occurred that their forms became distinct and coherent from the ground of being upon which they found their root substance. They comprised the cultures known to Pantarctican scientists today as Proto-Shapists (or variously as Proteo-Shapists, hence Proteans) in that their forms were not yet completely discernible as shapes.

The first true Shapist society to arise from this pre-historic epoch, according to the shapological record, was the Singulones, who are more commonly known today as Circulons. Circulon society mirrored their physical biomorphus of the circle, which was perceived as singular, complete, and perfect. They were capable of smooth fluid motion in any direction, which is represented today by the Queen of the modern chess board. And lacking natural predators, they grew to immense size before perishing by natural causes, and returning to formlessness. However, as a result of their autogenic origins in formlessness, Circulons were sterile. Successive generations of Circulons arose not through reproduction, but through dynamic processes self-instantiation and transformation, a biomorphic life cycle stage which scholars have termed ‘apotheosis’ among Proteans. As a result, Circulon culture was discontinuous and continually replaced, on account of its accumulated knowledge of shapehood being inadequately and randomly re-transmitted from one generation to the next.

The Circle of Elder Circles, seeing this, convened as a body and discussed what should be done. Even at this early date, a faction of conservative Pure Formists had arisen, who looked backwards at their former formless state with longing. It was their strongly held opinion that ‘everything was fine,’ and they should ‘do nothing.’ In counter-balance to that position, a progressive bloc arose, who espoused the doctrine of Doing Something, though internally they were split as to what could or should be done, and what the desired outcome was. Due to its inherently singular nature, Singulone society had not developed a robust system to mediate societal conflict. As a result, no forward progress was made at a societal level between opposing positions. Those who believed in doing nothing did nothing. And those who believed in doing something sometimes did something, not certainly exactly of what they were doing, and also sometimes lapsed into doing nothing. As a result, that generation too fell away, and the conflict and underlying systemic problem was forgotten about for another few generations until the cycle began again.

During the continuous waves of rising and falling of Circulon Culture, other dynamic principles were taking hold within the formless ground of being. These beings in ancient sources are referred to as ‘sprites,’ though it is unclear as to whether in substance they differed from the underlying dynamic sparks which incited the formation of Singulone society. In either case, having observed from without to a certain extent the struggles within Circulon society to transmit knowledge and mediate conflict, these beings when they inhabited forms did so as bi-directional polarity connected by a thin cord or line. From them, the world of forms were organized into positive and negative, hot and cold, and even before and after. Due to their organizing force, they even affected the elder, more ordered, and august Shape Society of the Circulons. As the world of forms relished in organizing and re-organizing itself along polarities, the Pure Formist and Conformist factions (Conforma) of the Circle of Singulones finally split. The Pure Formists went on doing nothing, and Conformists came together as a new body dedicated to doing something.

Understanding now for the first time the fundamental nature of duality, the Conformists joined together with those spritely animating principles, and the Secondum Ordinem of the Duogons was formed. It was during their earliest days that, in working together, the Duogon Culture discovered division, in which their bodies would become polarized in such a manner that resulted in it splitting into two distinct children, each of which retained the knowledge of the parent shape. Heritage and the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation thus established, Duogon Culture thrived, and easily out-competed Circulon Culture for available resources, pushing back the original Circulon habitations to isolated pockets. Their emblems were the arrow, the ray, the spike, and the long staff.

Through many long generations, thus, Duogon Culture persisted and flourished. Unlike their Circulon ancestors who self-generated, or the sprites who came from another place to inhabit the material realm, Duogons begat Duogons who begat Duogons, ad infinitum. And the lines continued thus unbroken through time. Sequential in nature, Duogons co-mingled with time in ways which Circulons never managed. Though Duogon priests asserted publicly the popular myth that their cultural knowledge of shape had been handed down with perfect fidelity from the dawn of their entry as a culture into time, there were none now living who could attest to the verity of this assertion. Thus crept into that society a certain doubt as to their own cultural legitimacy, which resulted in an erosion of trust in the Duogon system of governance (a rule by two consuls). Coupled with a brittleness in the face of new environmental conditions which required change and adaptation, Duogon society lost its footing and began to falter.

Among the disgraced surviving enclaves, a resurgence of Pure Formist belief was brewing, which ultimately culminated in the leaderless First Circular Revolt. Duogon armies were sent into the field to quell the rebellion, but its center was nowhere, and their lines became thing. During this time, a mysterious Third Force arose from the sea, and began landing units on the shores of mainland Duogonia. Their force, once assembled, marched on the City of Duo. The few remaining Duogon units mustered on the field of battle, and with their main armies spread throughout the far-flung reaches of the continent, they expected to be overwhelmed by the mysterious invaders. Instead, the Third Force, upon entering the field of battle arranged themselves bodily into ordered ranks, and then made an elaborate show of empty hands. Up the middle, the column parted, and large wagons laden with goods were unveiled before the eyes of the scared and confused Duogons.

Thus, Duogon Culture was overthrown by the mysterious arrivals without loss of life. The people of the City of Duo, understanding that their visitors were not hostile, came out to examine the goods of the Third Force, and to trade with them. Duogon architecture and artifacts were not complex, consisting generally of only circular and linear forms from their antecedent cultures. Third Force artifacts, however, exhibited traits which fell outside the norms and knowledge transmitted for so long by Duogonian culture, which had a more strict binary constuction. Whereas Duogon philosophy consisted of paired opposites, the Third Force Culture, or Triangulons as we know them today, (originally known as Trigons) was based on a super-ordinate third position which fell outside the ken of the more simplistic Duogons. Thus they were able to see and understand things which Duogon Culture had not, which resulted in a higher order of technology and creativity than anything they had witnessed previously. As a result, the Triangulon priest class which quickly arose among the superstitious Duogons was formally dedicated to the Mysterium, or that which to them they believed to be unknowable. And as the origins of the Triangulons were to them foreign and exotic, this only fed the mysterious aura of the conquering Shape Trader culture.

For traders they were, the Triangulons, and not warriors. Culturally, they did not think of themselves as Triangulons, nor as the colloquial ‘Third Force.’ They simply called themselves Shape Traders, after their ancient customs. From their superior vantage point over other shape cultures of the period, they were able to overcome primitive win-or-lose duality, and were the originators of the so-called ‘triangular trade’ which functioned according to a win-win-win exchange for all involved parties. Thus they grew strong and were able to assimilate other cultures in their native land, and spread out via the highways of the seas to other lands, where they also peacefully subdued the Duogons, Circulons, and countless other small shape tribes whose names have been lost to history.

As traders and explores, the Triangulons visited all the lands then in existence, whose bodies had arisen out of formlessness along with the shapes and proto-shapes which had inhabited them over many long ages. In their explorations, they captured and catalogued objects and entities of all types and varieties, and stored three copies of each of them in vast Form Libraries throughout the wide lands. As these Libraries increased in wealth, power, and cultural importance, around them sprang up the fore-runners of contemporary universities, in which Triangulon scholars and theorists further catalogued and refined prior Shapist doctrines, and even achieved advanced mathematical calculations related to the faithful reproduction of forms through time.

It was in this wise which Triangulon scholars catalogued and organized all the worlds’ shapes and knowledge, until their collection was deemed nearly complete. The only things lacking in their vast store-houses were examplars of certain types of magico-mythic monsters who were referenced in the scattered folk tales of certain conquered tribes. It was, of course, unknown due to the antiquity of the inherited tales (some of which had been passed biomorphically down through Duogon legend) whether such beasts truly existed. It was the opinion of the majority of Triangulon scholars, whose culture had by then explored all known lands, that whether or not they had existed in actual fact, they were unrecoverable due to the sequential nature of time, whose flow was perceived by them as unidirectional.

Some Shape Traders, however, fueled by desire for ever greater wealth, allied with the restless Triangulon scholars, who believed the Form Libraries to be still incomplete, and therefore imperfect. They set out on a vast expedition to find those missing animals, and bring them back in triumph. It was said in ancient tales of these amazing unnamed creatures that they had the ability to emit time, and that those who stood in proximity to them experienced time dilations, and life-everlasting. Despite their immense riches, mortality still vexed the Triangulons. And this legendary detail which was seized upon by these restless scholars who argued that the apparent unidirectional flow of time (as of a river toward the sea) was proof that such beings existed, and that they must stand at the center of time, and called all beings toward them. And so they went to find them in their great ships.

In theology, apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature. In art, the term refers to the treatment of any subject (a figure, group, locale, motif, convention or melody) in a particularly grand or exalted manner.

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From at least the Geometric period of the ninth century BC, the long-deceased heroes linked with founding myths of Greek sites were accorded chthonic rites in their heroon, or “hero-temple”.

Source: Apotheosis – Wikipedia

In Greek mythology, Proteus (/ˈproʊtiəs, -tjuːs/;[1] Ancient Greek: Πρωτεύς) is an early prophetic sea-god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the “Old Man of the Sea” (halios gerôn).[2] Some who ascribe to him a specific domain call him the god of “elusive sea change”, which suggests the constantly changing nature of the sea or the liquid quality of water in general. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar to several cultures, will change his shape to avoid having to; he will answer only to someone who is capable of capturing the beast. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, with the general meaning of “versatile”, “mutable”, “capable of assuming many forms”. “Protean” has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.

Source: Proteus – Wikipedia

This is, in a nutshell, the surviving legend of the rex Nemorensis: the priesthood of Diana at Nemi was held by a person who obtained that honour by slaying the prior incumbent in a trial by combat, and who could remain at the post only so long as he successfully defended his position against all challengers. However, a successful candidate had first to test his mettle by plucking a golden bough from one of the trees in the sacred grove.

Source: Rex Nemorensis – Wikipedia

The rex sacrorum was a feature of Italic religion and possibly also Etruscan. The title is found in Latin cities such as Lanuvium, Tusculum, and Velitrae. At Rome the priesthood was deliberately depoliticized;[10] the rex sacrorum was not elected, and his inauguration was merely witnessed by a comitia calata, an assembly called for the purpose. Like the flamen Dialis but in contrast to the pontiffs and augurs, the rex was barred from a political and military career. He was thus not a “decayed king”; rather, after the overthrow of the kings of Rome, the office of rex sacrorum fulfilled at least some of the sacral duties of kingship, with the consuls assuming political power and military command, as well as some sacral functions.

Source: Rex Sacrorum – Wikipedia

The College of Pontiffs was one of the four major priestly colleges; originally their responsibility was limited to supervising both public and private sacrifices, but as time passed their responsibilities increased.[2] The other colleges were the augurs (who read omens), the quindecimviri sacris faciundis (“fifteen men who carry out the rites”), and the Epulones (who set up feasts at festivals).

Source: College of Pontiffs – Wikipedia

A collegium (plural collegia, “gathered together”; English “college”) was any association in ancient Rome with a legal personality. Such associations had various functions.

Collegia could function as guilds, social clubs, or burial societies; in practice, in ancient Rome, they sometimes became organized bodies of local businessmen and even criminals, who ran the mercantile/criminal activities in a given urban region, or rione.

Source: Collegium (ancient Rome) – Wikipedia

The center of life in Classical Quatrian society issued forth from the Temple Mount of the Hypergeum, located at the anti-nodal point immediately south of the ring of mountains which encircled the Hypogeum itself. It served as a point of pilgrimage for people from all over Quatria, and was the basis for the circuits which the traveling minstrels followed as they ministered across the lands.

Looking down the white cliffs over the Bay of Erasure, temple life was governed by a hierarchic priesthood of musicians. It was their purpose as keepers of the Hypergeum to ensure the production of a constant cacophony of musical prayer to ward off the gaping silence and emptiness of the node of the Hypogeum, whose main life and body lay somewhere beneath the surface of that region.

It was said that the resonance of the vibrations of their voices and instruments uplifted shaped the underlying essence of all things, the flux from which existence itself arose in the give-and-take of node and anti-node. Though this conception may be considered primitive to the modern Pantarctican way of thinking, in its poetic conceit, our scientists recognize one possible reading that the Quatrian priestly caste were perhaps aware of branespace. This has, however, yet to be proven by scant historical records found from this period.

What we do know, is that the priesthood was strictly divided into castes, at the top of which were the troubadors (or virtuosi, by later tradition), or those ecstatic few (typically born of noble families) who had “found” the source of all music (or variously, who had been found by this source), and as a result were said to exist in a state of singular flow or harmony with the available spectrum between node and anti-node governing all things.

Below them were the minnesingers, those who having glimpsed the far shore of beauty to which troubadors had crossed over and lived, instead took a vow of poverty, and opted to stay behind, and sing to others of the love, longing and suffering for those far reaches, in the hopes by their music of ferrying others across. In their way, minnesingers thus functioned as the anti-node to the virtuoso troubador class. Their music governed tears, and they worshiped literally the Bay of Erasure, often setting out on small fishing boats to try to walk across the water.

Below them were the bards, whose focus was order, composition, and transmission of the chronicles through time and across successive generations. Their music was epic poetry, the re-telling of myth and history, of the doings of heroes and gods, which were contiguous in the reality of these peoples at this time. They were also responsible for the recitation of the law, and judges were chosen from their ranks based on skill, completeness of knowledge, and wisdom. In a sense, they did much of the practical work of governance which the two priestly classes above them were too ecstatic or self-effacing to be much bothered with.

At the anti-node of and below the bards were the jugglers and gleemen, who performed the bawdy tales and jokes, acrobatics and tricks so beloved by the common people. From their ranks were constituted the players in the great mystery plays of the many holidays which dotted the Quatrian calendar. Though they were considered among the initiates of the Hypergeum as the lowest of the low, they were perhaps the most greatly esteemed by and closest to the commoners.

Lastly were the waits or watchers, whose role was to watch over and ensure the physical safety of the Temple Mount. They took an oath to never pass out of the walls. And on the approach of danger would set their mouths to the great horns whose pipes were the network of natural tunnels and chambers below the city, which linked the anti-node of the Hypergeum to the Hypogeic node to the north. Thus, when they blew their instruments, great and rumbling low notes issued forth which could be heard to the furthest reaches of Quatria, calling the people to arms if need be. Their sounds had not been struck in many thankful ages.