The Diomedeia

Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire

By: Gregory Michael Nixon

Narrated by: Simon de Deney

A historically-based novel with authentic, legendary, and fictional characters interacting across the extraordinary panorama of the Bronze Age Collapse in the Hittite Empire between the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas. Diomedes, previously a hero of the Trojan War, and the polyglot Peoples of the Sea raid inland into the Hittite Empire during its final months. The tale is both a study of ancient mythic consciousness and an exciting adventure of love, character, destruction, desperate survival, and the lived mystery of pagan rituals. It was a time of such chaos, royalty was overthrown, palaces and temples were burnt, and the power of the gods was thrown into doubt, yet the ancient Great Goddess, who had been suppressed, began to regain her former dominance.

Diomedes, though prominent in Homer's Iliad—a warrior the equal of Hektor or Achilleus, a thinker as cunning as Odysseus and as wise as Nestor, and the only man who dared wound gods—has seldom, if ever, been the chief protagonist in literature. He is given his due within. His own wandering adventures and suffering after the destruction of Ilios are traced as far north as Kolkhis (Colchis) in the Black Sea, through involvement with the last Hittite royal family in Anatolia, and as far south as Alasiya (Cyprus) in the Mediterranean. He ascends the heights of glory but also must descend into the dark Underworld in the attempt to save the one he loves.

[In the upcoming sequel and completion of the tale, Diomedeia II: Return to Tiryns, Diomedes returns to the devastated mainland Greece to visit his home city of Tiryns and fight for ancient Pylos, one of only two palace states left standing. The other is Athens. He goes to Ithaca to meet Odysseus, his old friend who took the Palladion from him. Eventually, he makes his way to southern Italy where becomes a founder of cities rather than a destroyer of them].

©2022 Gregory Michael Nixon (P)2024 Gregory Michael Nixon