 By contrast, consider the 7th century BCE poem of Hesiod, his Theogony (genealogy of the gods). Hesiod tells the traditional story of the Olympian gods, beginning with Chaos, a vague divine primordial entity or condition. From Chaos, a sequence of gods is generated, often by sexual congress, but sometimes no cause for their coming to be is given. The divine figures that thus arise are often connected with a part of the physical universe, or with some aspect of human experience, so his theogony is also a cosmogony (an account of the generation of the world). The divinities (and the associated parts of the world) come to be and struggle violently among themselves; finally Zeus triumphs and establishes and maintains an order of power among the others. Hesiod’s world is one in which the major divinities are individuals who behave like super-human beings (Gaia or earth, Ouranos or sky, Cronos — an unlocated regal power, Zeus); some of the others are personified characteristics (e.g., Momus, blame; and Dusnomia, lawlessness). For the Greeks, the fundamental properties of divinity are immortality (they are not subject to death) and great power (as part of the cosmos or in managing events), and each of Hesiod’s characters has these properties (even though in the story some are defeated, and seem to be destroyed). Hesiod’s story is like a vast Hollywood-style family history, with envy, rage, love, and lust all playing important parts in the coming-to-be of the world as we know it. The earliest rulers of the universe are violently overthrown by their offspring (Ouranos is overthrown by Cronos, Cronos by Zeus). Zeus insures his continued power by swallowing his first consort Metis (counsel or wisdom); by this he prevents the predicted birth of rivals and acquires her attribute of wisdom (Theogony 886–900). In a second poem, Works and Days, Hesiod pays more attention to human beings, telling the story of earlier, greater creatures who died out or were destroyed by themselves or Zeus. Humans were created by Zeus, are under his power, and are subject to his judgment and to divine intervention for either good or ill. Hesiod’s world, like Homer’s, is one that is god-saturated, where the gods may intervene in all aspects of the world, from the weather to mundane particulars of human life, acting on the ordinary world order, in a way that humans, limited as they are by time, location, and narrow powers of perception, must accept but cannot ultimately understand. The Presocratics reject this account, instead seeing the world as a kosmos, an ordered natural arrangement that is inherently intelligible and not subject to supra-natural intervention. A striking example is Xenophanes DK21B32/LM8D9: “And she whom they call Iris, this too is by nature cloud / purple, red, and greeny yellow to behold.” Iris, the rainbow, traditional messenger of the gods, is after all, not supra-natural, not a sign from the gods on Olympus who are outside of and immune from the usual world order; rather it is, in its essence, colored cloud. (A good discussion of the Hesiodic myths in relation to Presocratic philosophy can be found in McKirahan 2011. Burkert 2008 surveys influence from the east on the development of Presocratic philosophy, especially the myths, astronomy, and cosmogony of the Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians.)