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58 When Zeus had vanquished him and lashed him with his strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down a maimed wreck. The huge earth groaned. A flame shot forth from the stricken lord in the dim, rugged, secluded valley of the Mount. when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor, melting as tin melts when heated by man's art... . In the glow of a blazing fire did the earth melt down. In spite of the crash and the tremendous impact of Typhon's ve- hicle, the god himself remained alive. According to the Theogony, Zeus cast him, too, "into wide Tartarus." With this victory his reign was secure; and he turned to the important business of pro- creation, bringing forth progeny by wives and concubines alike. Though the Theogony described only one battle between Zeus and Typhon, the other Greek writings assert that that was the final battle, preceded by several others in which Zeus was the first one to be hurt. Initally Zeus fought with Typhon at close quarters, using the special sickle his mother had given him for the "evi deed," for it was his purpose also to castrate Typhon. But Typhon enmeshed Zeus in his net. wrested his sickle away, and with it cut out the sinews of Zeus' hands and feet. He then deposited the help- less Zeus, his sinews, and his weapons in a cave. But the gods Aegipan and Hermes found the cave, resurrecte Zeus by restoring his sinews, and returned his weapons to him. Zeus then escaped and flew back "in a Winged Chariot" to Olym- pus, where he acquired a new supply of bolts for his Thunderer. With these Zeus renewed the attack on Typhon, driving him to Mount Nyssa, where the Fates tricked Typhon into eating the foo of mortal men; whereupon he was weakened instead of being strengthened. The renewed fighting began in the skies over Mount Haemus in Thrace, continued over Mount Etna in Sicily, an ended over Mount Casius on the Asiatic coast of the eastern Mediterranean. There Zeus, using his Thunderbolt, shot Typhon down from the skies. The similarity between the battles, the weapons used, the loca- tions, as well as the tales of castration, mutilation, and resurrec- tion—all in the course of a struggle for succession—convinced THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN