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The murder of Laborosoarchodos illustrates well the strengths of the Seleucids’ military and administrative élites as Berossos saw them: these men were needed to sustain the empire and in times of crisis could act decisively and in the interest of the common good. However, their methods were problematic, and could not guarantee long-term stability. There is no suggestion that the friends acted in bad faith when they got rid of Laborosoarchodos, but Berossos does hint that murdering the young king (whom one might perhaps rather have thought in need of benign correction) contributed to the downfall of the dynasty not long after. The friends of the king, it would seem, did not have the wherewithal to “maintain the kingship” in the long term; that, Berossos suggests, was a Chaldaean task.

In Book 2 of the Babyloniaca Berossos traces the Chaldaeans, as a group, back to the time of the great flood, and to King Xisouthros, who saved not only humankind but also the archive of human civilization: