In Greek mythology, Deucalion was the son of Prometheus; ancient sources name his mother as Clymene, Hesione, or Pronoia. He is closely related to the biblical story of Noah and the flood.
1. Etymology
According to popular etymology, the name Deucalion comes from deukos, a variant of gleucos, meaning “sweet new wine, must, sweetness,” and haliéus, meaning “sailor, seaman, fisherman.” The name of his wife Pyrrha derives from the adjective ttupoc, meaning “flame-colored, orange.”
2. Family
There is a land surrounded by high mountains, rich in sheep and pastures, where Prometheus, son of Iapetus, begot Deucalion, who first founded cities and built temples to the immortal gods, and first ruled over men. This land, the neighbors who live around Haemonia
Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon (who is indigenous in other traditions). Their children, apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one son, Hellen.
His descendants are said to have lived in Thessaly. A corrupt fragment may make Deucalion the son of Prometheus and Pronoea. In some accounts, Deucalion’s other children were Melantho, mother of Delphus by Poseidon, and Candybus, who gave his name to the city of Candyba in Lycia.
3. Flood accounts
The flood in the time of Deucalion was caused by the wrath of Zeus, kindled by the arrogance of the Pelasgians. According to this story, Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, had sacrificed a child to Zeus, who was horrified by this savage offering. Zeus unleashed a flood, so that rivers ran in torrents and the sea flooded the coastal plain, enveloped the hillsides with water, and washed everything away.
Deucalion, with the help of his father Prometheus, saved himself from this flood by building a chest. Like the biblical Noah and his Mesopotamian counterpart Utnapistim, he uses his device to survive the flood with his wife, Pyrrha.
The most complete accounts are provided in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus. Deucalion, who reigned in the region of Phthia, had been warned of the flood by his father, Prometheus.
Deucalion went to build a chest and carefully stock it (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 only surviving couple.
Once the flood was over and the couple had thanked Zeus, Deucalion (said in several sources to be 82 years old at the time) consulted an oracle of Themis on how to repopulate the earth.
They threw the rocks behind their shoulders, and the stones formed people. Pyrrha became women; Deucalion became men. The second-century writer Lucian recounted the Greek Deucalion in De Dea, Syria.
It seems to refer more to the legends of the floods of the Near East: in his version, Deucalion (whom he also calls Sisythus) took his children, his wives, and pairs of animals with him into the ark, and later they built a great temple in Manbij (northern Syria), on the site of the abyss that received all the waters. He also describes how pilgrims brought ships of seawater to this place twice a year, from Arabia to Mesopotamia, to commemorate this event.
4. Variant stories
On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated that his parents were Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and he does not mention anything about a flood, but rather names him as commander of the Parnassians who expelled the “sixth generation” of Pelasgians from Thessaly.
One of the first Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus, is said to have written a book about Deucalion, but it no longer survives. The only existing fragment of it that mentions Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but names him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia.
The much later geographer Pausanias, following 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 claims that they lived in Cynus, and that his tomb is still there, while hers can be seen in Athens; he also mentions a pair of islands in the Aegean Sea named after the couple.
5. Interpretation
This mythological story has many variations in different cultures, which have required many interpretations.
Mosaic agreements
The 19th-century classic John Lempriere, in the Bibliotheca Classica, argued that, as the story had been told in later versions, it accumulated details from the stories of Noah and Moses: “Thus, Apollodorus gives Deucalion a large chest as a means of safety; Plutarch speaks of the doves with which he sought to find out if the waters had receded, and Lucian of the animals of all kinds that he had taken with him.”
Quotes by early scholars
For some time during the Middle Ages, many European Christian scholars continued to accept the Greek mythical story at face value, thus asserting that the Deucalion flood was a regional flood, occurring a few centuries later than the global one survived by Noah’s family. Based on the archaeological stele known as the Parian Chronicle.
The Flood of Deucalion is generally arranged as occurring sometime around c. 1528 BC. The flood of Deucalion can be dated in St. Jerome’s chronology to c. 1460 BC. According to Augustine of Hippo (City of God XVIII, 8, 10, and 11), Deucalion and his father Prometheus were contemporaries of Moses. At the time of Crotopus, the burning of Phaeton and the flood of Deucalion occurred.
6. Myth
In Greek legend, this myth is told as a Greek equivalent of Noah, the son of Prometheus
Deucalion and Pyrrha
When Zeus, the king of the gods, decided to destroy all of humanity with a flood, Deucalion built an ark in which, according to one version, he and his wife rode out the flood and landed on Mount Parnassus.
The couple correctly interpreted this to mean that they should become part of the rocks on the hillside, and they did so. The rocks thrown by Deucalion turned into men, while those thrown by Pyrrha turned into women. In the original Greek translations, the god Hermes actually told the couple to throw rocks after them.
