#promachus

And some headcanons I have for them

[PHOTOS TAKEN: SEPTEMBER 23RD, 2024 | Image IDs: Two photos of a brown, black, white, and maroon, maroon-legged lion fly on a grey wooden board, the tip of its abdomen facing directly down /End IDs.]

Specifically:

Aegialeus: it’s likely that he was born late, if we go by Statius’s Thebaid where Adrastus was mentioned to be “lacked male issue” by the time he married his daughters to Polyneices and Tydeus respectively (Thebaid book 1, 390–394). Had to say, this reason makes sense to explain why Adrastus wanted to marry off his daughters so eagerly. If so then Aegialeus was likely born after the time of the double marriage, and still old enough to beget a son before he went for war. Would he be at the age of eight by the time the first Theban War took place? (Might be younger though, since there’s Achilles as an example…)

Alcmaeon: he would be old enough to take heed of his father’s orders for vengeance, but not old enough to do that until about ten years later. Perhaps we may go with Orestes parallel and consider him to be around ten when the Seven went against Thebes, so he’d have the vengeance in his 20’s?

Diomedes: so I actually failed to identify any source for that statement on the wiki page for Diomedes. Nevertheless, Diomedes being younger than the rest of the group makes sense for BOTH the thing about people around him constantly reminding him of the his father and the war in Thebes AND the parallel of him being younger than most of the other Achaean chieftains by the time of the Trojan War.

Sthenelus: older than Diomedes, for sure. Old enough to father a son or two a few years before the Trojan War took place—if Cometes was real, that is (if not, then Cylarabes having died without an issue probably means he could be born at any time which does not help with our calculation). Let’s say, he might be at least eighteen when he begot Cometes, and Cometes being…well, eighteen? When he consorted with Aegialeia (you see, another thing that’s so fricked up is the age difference. If Aegialeia was a daughter of Aegialeus then maybe this makes some…sense—but she would be too young for Diomedes in that case; but if she’s a daughter of Adrastus then…it’s straight up two generations between Cometes and Aegialeia which is just…ugh. Welp another reason why I don’t acknowledge this wicked version of Aegialeia’s story). We don’t actually know the time gap between the Epigoni campaign and the Trojan War (again, that claim on Diomedes’s wiki page is unsourced), but if it’s five to ten years then Sthenelus would be ranging from 16 to 21 when he went for Thebes.

Thersandros: he might be older than Diomedes or about the same age—putting his age between Aegialeus’s and Diomedes’s just in case.

Promachus: his father Parthenopaeus was young. Like, the youngest among the Seven against Thebes. Still, he was old enough to father a son before he left for war (again, let’s say it’s eighteen for the sake of calculation), and we don’t really know when he did that. Let’s say the age when Parthenopaeus left for war ranges from 18 to 23: then Promachus would be around 10 to 15? Again being the youngest, perhaps?

Can’t really decide the age for Amphilochus, Euryalus, Polydorus, Medon simply based on their lineage…

Promachus fitchii (all three specimens in the top row) is reportedly rare east of the Missisipi. Good thing I'm not over there, I see these guys all the time. The promachids I encounter tend to be locally abundant in a given area, almost all of the ones inside my town are P. bastardii, and further out into the country I see more P. fitchii. Who knows if that's anything more than just chance.

an absolute bastard of a giant robberfly (Promachus bastardii) preying on a honeybee