Deucalion

Deucalion and Pyrrha from a 1562 version of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

In Greek mythology, Deucalion (Ancient Greek: Δευκαλίων) was a son of Prometheus and Pronoia. When the anger of Zeus was ignited against the hubris of the Pelasgians, Zeus decided to put an end to the Bronze Age with the Deluge. For Lycaon, the king of Arcadia had sacrificed a boy to Zeus. Zeus was appalled at this cannibal offering and others like that. So Zeus set upon loosing a deluge, where the rivers would run in torrents and the sea encroach rapidly on the coastal plain, engulf the foothills with spray, and wash everything clean. Deucalion was then saved from this deluge, by the aid of his father Prometheus, like his Biblical analogue Noah and the Mesopotamian counterpart Utnapishtim by building an ark.

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Etymology

Deucalion is parallel to Biblical Noah and to Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Sumerian flood that is told in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It has been suggested that Deucalion's name comes from δεύκος deucos, a variant of γλεύκος, "sweet new wine, must, sweetness"[1] + ἁλιεύς halieus "sailor, seaman, fisher"[2] making him even more parallel to Noah, inventor of wine.. His wife Pyrrha's name is somewhat more certain: it is an adjective "πυρρός, ά, όν," meaning "flaming (figuratively, never with actual fire)" or "flame-colored, orange".

But perhaps a shred of earlier myth survives in the tale that another survivor of the Flood was Megaron, who was roused from his couch by the cries of Cranes and climbed to the top of Mount Gerania ("Crane Mountain") and so was saved. And Cerambus of Pelion: he the nymphs changed to a scarab beetle and he flew to the top of Mount Parnassus above the waters.

Deucalion in Ancient Greek mythography

Of Deucalion's birth, the Argonautica states:

"There [in Achaea, i.e. Greece] is a land encircled by lofty mountains, rich in sheep and in pasture, where Prometheus, son of Iapetus, begat goodly Deucalion, who first founded cities and reared temples to the immortal gods, and first ruled over men. This land the neighbours who dwell around call Haemonia [i.e. Thessaly]."

The fullest accounts are provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus. Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia, had been forewarned of the flood by his father, Prometheus. Deucalion was to build an ark and provision it carefully (no animals are rescued in this version of the Flood myth), so that when the waters receded after nine days, he and his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, were the one surviving pair of humans. Their ark touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[3] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[4] or Mount Athos in Chalkidiki,[5] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[6]

Hyginus mentions the opinion of a Hegesianax that Deucalion is to be identified with Aquarius, "because during his reign such quantities of water poured from the sky that the great Flood resulted."

Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion consulted an oracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that "mother" is Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the "bones" to be rocks. They threw the rocks behind their shoulders and the stones formed people. Pyrrha's became women; Deucalion's became men.

Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon (who is autochthonous in other traditions).

Their children as apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and sons Hellen and Idomeneus. Their descendants were said to have dwelt in Thessaly. One fragment agrees with later accounts in making Deucalion the son of Prometheus and Pronoea; another, the son of Minos.

On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives Deucalion's parentage as Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and mentions nothing about a flood, but instead names him as commander of those from Parnassus who drove the "sixth generation" of Pelasgians from Thessaly.

One of the earliest Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus, was said to have written a book about Deucalion, but it no longer survives. The only extant fragment of his to mention Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but names him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia. The much later geographer Pausanias, following on this tradition, names Deucalion as a king of Ozolian Locris and father of Orestheus. Plutarch mentions a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona, Epirus; while Strabo asserts that they lived at Cynus, and that her grave is still to be found there, while his may be seen at Athens; he also mentions a pair of Aegean islands named after the couple.

The 2nd century writer Lucian gave an account of the Greek Deucalion in De Dea Syria that seems to refer more to the Near Eastern flood legends: in his version, Deucalion (whom he also calls Sisythus) took his children, their wives, and pairs of animals with him on the ark, and later built a great temple in Manbij (northern Syria), on the site of the chasm that received all the waters; he further describes how pilgrims brought vessels of sea water to this place twice a year, from as far as Arabia and Mesopotamia, to commemorate this event.

Deucalion's flood may be dated in the chronology of Saint Jerome to ca. 1460 BC.

Deucalionids

The descendants of Deucalion and Pyrrha are the below:

Primary sources

References

  1. ↑ Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, p142
  2. ↑ Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, p33
  3. ↑ Pindar, Olympian Odes, 9.43; cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.313-347
  4. ↑ Hyginus' Fabulae 153
  5. ↑ Servius' commentary on Virgil's Bucolics, 6:41
  6. ↑ This view is usually ascribed to Hellanicus of Lesbos

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See also