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What Berossos sketches here is an etiology of his own peers. The Chaldaeans, he suggests, started off as the “friends” (philoi) of Xisouthros, the mythical king from the time of the great flood. The conceptual framework is again Seleucid, though Berossos adds an important qualification: after the flood, the Chaldaeans can be friends of the king only at one remove; henceforth, their commitment is to kingship as an institution, and to the arts of civilization that underpin it. Berossos explains the shift from personal loyalty to institutional commitment as a process of loss and (partial) compensation: the Chaldaeans lose Xisouthros and are entrusted with the archive of civilization instead. This trade-off explains not only how they could preserve kingship for Nebuchadnezzar, but also what they might contribute to the flourishing of the Seleucid Empire as Berossos saw it – for the Seleucids too needed someone who maintained the kingship. Berossos’s own work seems conceived with just that aim in mind: by writing his history of kingship, he offered Antiochus the level of institutional support, experience, and wisdom that only the Chaldaeans could give.