a new order. The creative gods are eternal and co-equal. Their order is temporarily threatened by Ophion, but that threat becomes a (re)affirmation of the divine order, with Kronos as the first king. The battle is also etiological, for it explained the myths about ancient sea monsters in both Greece and Asia Minor and the Middle East. The battle is described by Celsus: 'Pherecydes told the myth that an army was lined up against army, and he mentioned Kronos as leader of one, Ophion of the other, and he related their challenges and struggles, and that they agreed that the one who fell into Ogenos was the loser, while those who cast them out and conquered should possess the sky'. Chronos has become Kronos here. Presumably, as a prominent second creator, Zas also participates in the battle, after which he becomes Zeus. Ophion did not exist from the beginning but was born and had progeny of his own ( Ophionidai). He is serpentine, because his name is derived from ophis 'snake'. Traditionally, Gaia (Gê) was regarded as the mother of Typhon, and Chthoniê/Gê may be the mother of Ophion here. Ophion may also have been produced on her own in Tartarus, the cave under the earth. Typhon also originated in a cave. Otherwise the father may be Chronos, because his seed is the niches of the earth. Ophion and its brood are often depicted as ruling the birthing cosmos for some time before falling from power. The chaotic forces are eternal and cannot be destroyed; instead they are thrown out from the ordered world and locked away in Tartaros in a kind of "appointment of the spheres", in which the victor (Zeus-Cronus) takes possession of the sky and of space and time. Cronus (or Zeus in the more popularly known version) orders the offspring out from the cosmos to Tartaros. There they are kept behind locked gates, fashioned in iron and bronze. We are told about chaotic beings put into the pentemychos, and we are told that the Darkness has an offspring that is cast into the recesses of Tartaros. No surviving fragment makes the connection, but it is possible that the prison-house in Tartaros and the pentemychos are ways of referring to the essentially same thing. According to Celsus, Pherecydes said that: "Below that portion is the portion of Tartaros; the daughters of Boreas (the north wind), the Harpies