Ophion

Ophion, also called Ophioneus, was an early ruler of the cosmos who held Olympus with his wife Eurynome before Cronus and Rhea took their place. He is known mostly from a single song in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, and his name is connected with the Greek ophis, “serpent.”

The Song of Orpheus

In Book 1 (lines 496–511) of the Argonautica, the poet Orpheus sings to the Argonauts about the beginning of the world. Earth, sky and sea were once mixed together and then separated; the stars and the moon took their courses, mountains rose, and rivers and nymphs came into being. Then the song says that first of all Ophion and Eurynome, a daughter of Oceanus, ruled snowy Olympus. Ophion yielded his honour to Cronus and Eurynome hers to Rhea, by force of arm, and both fell into the waves of Ocean (1.503–506).

Cronus and Rhea then ruled over the Titan gods. Zeus was still a child in the Dictaean cave in Crete, and the Cyclopes had not yet given him the thunderbolt that made his fame.

Eurynome

Eurynome, Ophion’s partner, is called the daughter of Oceanus. Hesiod lists an Oceanid of that name among the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys (Theogony 358) and makes her the mother of the Graces by Zeus (Theogony 907–909), and Homer has an Oceanid Eurynome who, with Thetis, sheltered the god Hephaestus after he was thrown from Olympus (Iliad 18.398–405), but those are not the same story as the one in Orpheus’ song, and the sources do not say whether they are the same figure.

Ophion and the Titans

Apollonius places Ophion on Olympus, and his rule comes before that of Cronus and Rhea, the Titan rulers. Hesiod’s Theogony does not mention him, and the song does not say who his parents were.

Later poets remembered him as the ruler whom Zeus and his parents displaced. Lycophron calls Zeus “lord of Ophion’s throne” and says that Rhea, “skilled in wrestling,” cast the former queen into Tartarus before she gave birth to Zeus in secret (Alexandra 1191–1197). In Nonnus’ Dionysiaca (41.339–367) Ophion is the ancient scribe who engraved the oracles of fate on seven tablets, one for each planet, kept in the house of Harmonia.

The story is older than Apollonius. The early philosopher Pherecydes of Syros is reported to have told of a war between Cronus and Ophioneus with his army, in which the side that fell into Ocean lost and the victors held the sky; the passage survives only as quoted by the Christian writer Origen (Against Celsus 6.42). Beyond the serpent in his name and his fall into Ocean, the ancient sources say nothing more about his nature.

See Also: Eurynome, Cronus, Rhea, Titans, Oceanus, Zeus, Orpheus, Argonauts