Deucalion

 

(dyūkā'lēən) , in Greek mythology, son of Prometheus and father of Hellen. When Zeus, angered by humanity's irreverence, flooded the earth, Deucalion, warned by Prometheus, survived by taking refuge with his wife, Pyrrha, in an ark. Later, an oracle told them to cast behind them the bones of their mother (i.e., the stones of the earth). From these stones sprang men and women who repopulated the world.

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. This was a sacrifice that was forbidden in the new Olympian order, utterly inappropriate as an offering, and repugnant besides. Zeus struck Lycaon's house with a thunderbolt and turned him into a wolf. But it was the treatment Zeus received when he visited the hall of the fifty sons of Lycaon, in the usual poverty-stricken disguise. They set him a stew of sheep guts—hearts, livers and tripes—in which they included the stewed innards of their brother Nyctimus. Zeus was appalled at the primitive cannibal offering, and turned them all into a pack of wolves; he then restored Nyctimus to life. 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.

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.^{[citation needed]}. 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 (see crane (bird) for crane lore) 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 Chalcidice^[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.

Deucalion and Noah

Austrian rabbi Solomon Judah Leib Rappaport suggested a connection between Deucalion and Noah. He based this on the fact that the L and R sounds can be swapped in certain languages, he suggests that Deucalion should be pronounced Deucarion, although there is no proof of the Greeks having transliterated Hebrew R as L. Deker in Hebrew/Aramaic denotes a digging tool. Deucarion could then refer to Noah, who, as described in the Bible, dug a vineyard when leaving the Ark.^[7]

Primary sources

• Hesiod, Catalogue of Women fragments 1-3, 5, 68, 82 (ca. 700 BC)
• Hecataeus of Miletus, frag. 341 (500 BC)
• Pindar, Olympian Odes 9 (466 BC)
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 3.1086 (3rd c. BC)
• Virgil, Georgics 1.62 (29 BC)
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae 153; Poeticon astronomicon 2.29 (ca. 20 BC)
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.17.3 (ca 15 BC)
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.318ff.; 7.356 (ca. 8 AD)
• Strabo, Geographica, 9.4 (ca. 23 AD)
• Apollodorus, Library 1.7.2 (ca. 1st c. AD?)
• Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, 1 (75 AD)
• Lucian, De Dea Syria 12, 13, 28, 33 (2nd c. AD)
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.38.1 (2nd c. AD)
• Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3.211; 6.367 (ca. 500 AD)

Notes

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 Eclogues, 6:41
6. ^ This view is usually ascribed to Hellanicus of Lesbos
7. ^ Igrot Shir "Letters of Shir", published 1885 S. A. Graber - here p. 90.

External links

• Deucalion from Charles Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867), with source citations and some variants not given here.
• Deucalion from Carlos Parada, Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology.

References

• Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon at the Perseus Project

See also

• Deluge (mythology)

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