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Accessed: 3/16/22
Another synchronism still more interesting, is that of the flood of Deucalion which, according to the best chronologers, happened 1390 years before Christ. Deucalion is derived from Deo-Calyun or Deo Caljun: the true Sanscrit name is Deva-Cala-Yavana. The word Cala-Yavana is always pronounced in conversation, and in the vulgar dialects Ca-lyun or Calijun: literally, it signifies the devouring Yavana. He is represented in the puranas, as a most powerful prince, who lived in the western parts of India, and generally resided in the country of Camboja, now Gazni, the ancient name of which, is Safin or Safna. It is true, they never bestow upon him the title of Deva; on the contrary, they call him an incarnate demon: because he presumed to oppose Crishna; and was very near defeating his ambitious projects; indeed Crishna was nearly overcome and subdued, after seventeen bloody battles; and, according to the express words of the puranas, he was forced to have recourse to treachery; by which means Calyun was totally defeated in the eighteenth engagement. That his followers and descendants should bestow on him the title of Deva, or Deo, is very probable; and the numerous tribes of Hindus, who, to this day, call Chrishna, an impious wretch, a merciless tyrant, an implacable and most rancorous enemy. In short, these Hindus, who consider Crishna as an incarnate demon, now expiating his crimes in the fiery dungeons of the lowest hell, consider Calyun in a very different light, and, certainly, would have no objection to his being called Deo-Calyun. Be it as it may, Deucalion was considered as a Deva or Deity in the west, and had altars erected to his honour.
The Greek mythologists are not agreed about him, nor the country, in which the flood, that goes by his name, happened: some make him a Syrian; others say, that his flood happened in the countries, either round mount Etna, or mount Athos; the common opinion is, that it happened in the country adjacent to Parnasus; whilst others seem to intimate, that he was a native of India, when they assert that he was the son of Prometheus, who lived near Cabul, and whose cave was visited by Alexander, and his Macedonians. It is called in the puranas Garnda-sihan, or the place of the Eagle, and is situated near the place called Shibi, in Major Rennell's map of the western parts of India; indeed, Pramathasi[???] is better known in Sudia by the appellation of Sheba* [Bamian (in Sanscrit Vamiyan) and Shibr lay to the N.S. of Cabul.]. Deo-Calyun, who lived at Gazni, was obliged on the arrival of Chrishna, to fly to the adjacent mountains, according to the puranas; and the name of these mountains was formerly Parnasa, from which the Greeks made Parnasus; they are situated between Gazni and Peshower. Crishna, after the defeat of Calyun, desolated his country with fire and sword. This is called in Sanscrit Pralaya; and may be effected by water, fire, famine, pestilence, and war: but in the vulgar dialects, the word Pralaya, signifies only a flood or inundation. The legends relating to Deo-Calyun, Prometheus and his cave, will appear in the next dissertation I shall have the honour to lay before the Society.
-- On the Chronology of the Hindus, by Captain Francis Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Vol. V, P. 241, 1799
It will appear from many circumstances in the more ancient writers, that the great Patriarch [Noah] was highly reverenced by his posterity. They looked up to him as a person peculiarly favoured by heaven; and honoured him with many titles; each of which had a reference to some particular part of his history. They styled him Prometheus, Deucalion, Atlas, Theuth, Zuth, Xuthus, Inachus, Osiris. When there began to be a tendency towards idolatry; and the adoration of the Sun was introduced by the posterity of Ham; the title of Helius among others was conferred upon him. They called him also [x], and [x], which is the Moon; the secret meaning of which name I shall hereafter shew. When colonies went abroad, many took to themselves the title of Minyadae and Minyae from him; just as others were denominated Achaemenidae, Auritae, Heliadae, from the Sun. People of the former name are to be found in Arabia, and in other parts of the world. The natives at Orchomenos were styled Minyae; as were also some of the inhabitants of Thessaly. It was the ancient name of the Arcadians, interpreted [x], Lunares: but grew obsolete. Noah was the original [x], Zeus, and Dios. He was the planter of the vine, and the inventer of fermented liquors: whence he was denominated Zeuth, which signifies ferment; rendered [x], Zeus, by the Greeks. He was also Dionusos, interpreted by the Latines Bacchus, but very improperly. Bacchus was Chus, the grandson of Noah; as Ammon may be in general esteemed Ham, so much reverenced by the Egyptians.
As many of these terms were titles, they were not always uniformly adapted: nor were the ancients confident in their mythology. But nothing has produced greater confusion in these ancient histories, than that fatal turn in the Greeks of reducing every unknown term to some word, with which they were better acquainted. In short, they could not rest, till they had formed every thing by their own idiom; and made every nation speak the language of Greece. Among the people of the east the true name of the Patriarch [Noah] was preserved: they called him Noas, Naus, and sometimes contracted, Nous: and many places of sanctity, and many rivers were denominated from him. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae had been in Egypt; and had there obtained some knowledge of this personage. He spoke of him by the name of Noas or Nous...
However the story may have been varied, the principal outlines plainly point out the person, who is alluded to in these histories. Many personages having been formed out of one has been the cause of great confusion both in these instances, and in numberless others. Indeed the whole mythology of the ancients has by these means been sadly clouded. It is, I think, manifest, that Annacus and Nannacus, and even Inachus, relate to Noachus, or Noah. And not only these, but the histories of Deucalion, and Prometheus have a like reference to the Patriarch; in the six hundredth year (and not the three hundredth) of whose life the waters prevailed upon the earth. He was the father of mankind, who were renewed in him. Hence he is represented by another author, under the character of Prometheus, as a great artist, by whom men were formed anew, and were instructed in all that was good. He makes Minerva cooperate with him in making images of clay, according to the history before given: but he additionally gives to her the province of inspiring them with a living soul, instead of calling the winds together for that purpose. Hence the soul of man according to Lucian is an emanation of Divine Wisdom....
I think it is pretty plain, that all these emblematical representations, of which I have given so many instances, related to the history of the Deluge, and the conservation of one family in the ark. I have before taken notice that this history was pretty recent when these works were executed in Egypt; and when these rites were first established: and there is reason to think, that in early times, most shrines among the Mizraim were formed under the resemblance of a ship in memory of this great event. Nay, further, both ships and temples received their names from hence; being styled by the Greeks, who borrowed largely from Egypt, [x] and [x], and Mariners [x], Nautaa, in reference to the Patriarch, who was variously styled Noas, Naus, and Noah.
However the Greeks may in their mysteries have sometimes introduced a ship as a symbol; yet in their references to the Deluge itself, and to the persons preserved, they always speak of an ark, which they call [x], Larnax, [x], and the like. And though they were apt to mention the same person under various titles; and by these means different people seem to be made principals in the same history: yet they were so far uniform in their accounts of this particular event, that they made each of them to be preserved in an ark. Thus it is said of Deucalion, Perseus and Dionusus, that they were exposed upon the waters in a machine of this fabrick. Adonis was hid in an ark by Venus; and was supposed to have been in a state of death for a year....
The Arkites, who came into Greece, settled in many parts, but especially in Argolis and Thessalia; where they introduced their rites, and worship. In the former of these regions they were commemorated under a notion of the arrival of Da-Naus, or Danaus. It is supposed to have been a person, who fled from his brother AEgyptus, and came over in a sacred ship given him by Minerva. This ship, like the Argo, is said to have been the first ship constructed: and he was assisted in the building of it by the same Deity, Divine wisdom[x]. Both histories relate to the same event. Danaus upon his arrival built a temple called Argus, to Iona, or Juno; of which he made his daughters priestesses. The people of the place had an obscure tradition of a deluge, in which most perished; some few only escaping. The principal of these was Deucalion, who took refuge in the Acropolis, or temple. Those who settled in Thessaly, carried with them the same memorials concerning Deucalion, and his deliverance; which they appropriated to their own country. They must have had traditions of this great event strongly impressed upon their minds; as every place, to which they gave name, had some reference to that history. In process of time these impressions grew more and more faint; and their emblematical worship became very obscure, and unintelligible. Hence they at last confined the history of this event to their own country: and the Argo was supposed to have been built, where it was originally enshrined. As it was reverenced under the symbol of the Moon, called Man, and Mon; the people from this circumstance named their country Ai-Mona, in aftertimes rendered Aimonia. And we are informed by the Scholiast upon Apollonius, that it had of old many other names; such as Pyrrhodia, which it received in memory of Pyrrha the wife of Deucalion....
From Babylonia the Hellenes came into Egypt; and were the same as the Auritae, those Cuthite shepherds, who so long held that country in subjection. Hence we read of [x], and [x], "Hellenic Shepherds," and "Hellenic princes", who reigned in the infancy of that nation. They were what I term collectively Amonians; being the descendants of Ham, who by the Gentile writers was reputed the first-born of Deucalion, or Noah [x]. "Hellen was the first-born of Deucalion by Pyrrha: though some make him the son of Zeuth, or Dios....
-- A New System, Or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology: Wherein an Attempt is Made to Divest Tradition of Fable; and to Reduce the Truth to its Original Purity, by Jacob Bryant, 1775
Deucalion from Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum
In Greek mythology, Deucalion (/djuːˈkeɪliən/; Greek: Δευκαλίων) was the son of Prometheus; ancient sources name his mother as Clymene, Hesione, or Pronoia.[1][2] He is closely connected with the flood myth in Greek mythology.
Etymology
According to folk etymology, Deucalion's name comes from δεῦκος, deukos, a variant of γλεῦκος, gleucos, i.e. "sweet new wine, must, sweetness"[3][4] and from ἁλιεύς, haliéus, i.e. "sailor, seaman, fisher".[5] His wife Pyrrha's name derives from the adjective πυρρός, -ά, -όν, pyrrhós, -á, -ón, i.e. "flame-colored, orange".[6]
Deucalion and Pyrrha from a 1562 version of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Family
Of Deucalion's birth, the Argonautica (from the 3rd century BC) 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].
Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea,[7] and possibly a third, Amphictyon[8] (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 at least one son, Hellen.[9] Their descendants were said to have dwelt in Thessaly.
One source mentioned three sons of Deucalion and his wife: Orestheus, Marathonios and Pronous (father of Hellen).[10][11] In some accounts, Deucalion's other children were Melantho, mother of Delphus by Poseidon[12] and Candybus who gave his name to the town of Candyba in Lycia.[13]
Comparative table of Deucalion's family
Mythology
Deluge accounts
The flood in the time of Deucalion was caused by the anger of Zeus, ignited by the hubris of Lycaon and his sons, descendants of Pelasgus. According to this story, Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, had sacrificed a boy to Zeus, who, appalled by this offering, decided to put an end to the Bronze Age by unleashing a deluge. During this deluge, the rivers ran in torrents and the sea flooded the coastal plain, engulfing the foothills with spray, and washing everything clean. Deucalion, with the aid of his father Prometheus, was saved from this deluge by building a chest.[14] Like the biblical Noah and the Mesopotamian counterpart Utnapishtim, he uses this device to survive the deluge with his wife, Pyrrha.
The fullest accounts are provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses (late 1 BCE to early 1 CE) and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.[15] Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia, had been forewarned of the flood by his father, Prometheus. Deucalion was to build a chest 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 chest touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[16] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[17] or Mount Athos in Chalkidiki,[18] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[19]
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 (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) 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.[20]
The 2nd-century AD 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)[21] 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.[22]
Variant stories
On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated his parents to be 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.[23]
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.[24]
Interpretation
Mosaic accretions
The 19th-century classicist John Lemprière, in Bibliotheca Classica, argued that as the story had been re-told in later versions, it accumulated details from the stories of Noah: "Thus Apollodorus gives Deucalion a great chest as a means of safety; Plutarch speaks of the pigeons by which he sought to find out whether the waters had retired; and Lucian of the animals of every kind which he had taken with him. &c."[25] However, the Epic of Gilgamesh contains each of the three elements identified by Lemprière: a means of safety (in the form of instructions to build a boat), sending forth birds to test whether the waters had receded, and stowing animals of every kind on the boat. These facts were unknown to Lemprière because the Assyrian cuneiform tablets containing the Gilgamesh Epic were only discovered in the 1850s.[26] This was 20 years after Lemprière had published his "Bibliotheca Classica." The Gilgamesh epic is widely considered to be at least as old as Genesis, if not older.[27][28][29] Given the prevalence of religious syncretism in the ancient Greek world, these three elements may already have been known to some Greek-speaking peoples in popular oral variations of the flood myth, long before they were recorded in writing. The most immediate source of these three particular elements in the later Greek versions is unclear.
Dating by early scholars
For some time during the Middle Ages, many European Christian scholars continued to accept Greek mythical history at face value, thus asserting that Deucalion's flood was a regional flood, that occurred a few centuries later than the global one survived by Noah's family. On the basis of the archaeological stele known as the Parian Chronicle, Deucalion's Flood was usually fixed as occurring sometime around 1528 BC. Deucalion's flood may be dated in the chronology of Saint Jerome to c. 1460 BC. According to Augustine of Hippo (City of God XVIII,8,10,&11), Deucalion and his father Prometheus were contemporaries of Moses. According to Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata, "...in the time of Crotopus occurred the burning of Phaethon, and the deluges of Deucalion."[30]
Deucalionids
The descendants of Deucalion and Pyrrha are below:
• Hellen, Amphictyon, Orestheus, Candybus, Protogeneia, Pandora II, Thyia, Melantho, Pronous, Marathonius are their children.
• Aeolus, Dorus, Xuthus, Aetolus, Physcus, Aethlius, Graecus, Makednos, Magnes and Delphus are their grandsons.
Genealogy of Hellenes
Notes
1. The scholia to Odyssey 10.2 names Clymene as the commonly identified mother, along with Hesione (citing Acusilaus, FGrH 2 F 34) and possibly Pronoia.
2. A scholium to Odyssey 10.2 (=Catalogue fr. 4) reports that Hesiod called Deucalion's mother "Pryneie" or "Prynoe", corrupt forms which Dindorf believed to conceal Pronoea's name. The emendation is considered to have "undeniable merit" by A. Casanova (1979) La famiglia di Pandora: analisi filologica dei miti di Pandora e Prometeo nella tradizione esiodea. Florence, p. 145.
3. δεῦκος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
4. γλεῦκος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
5. ἁλιεύς. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
6. πυρρός. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
7. Pherecydes fr. 3F23
8. Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.7.2
9. Hes. Catalogue fragments 2, 5 and 7; cf. M.L. West (1985) The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Oxford, pp. 50–2, who posits that a third daughter, Protogeneia, who was named at (e.g.) Pausanias, 5.1.3, was also present in the Catalogue.
10. Hecateus, fr. 1F13
11. Gantz, Timothy (1993). Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Ancient Sources. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 167. ISBN 0-8018-4410-X.
12. Tzetzes on Lycophron, 209
13. Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica s.v. Κάνδυβα
14. Pleins, J. David (2010). When the great abyss opened : classic and contemporary readings of Noah's flood ([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-19-973363-7.
15. Apollodorus' library at theoi.com
16. Pindar, Olympian Odes 9.43; cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses I.313–347
17. "Hyginus' Fabulae 153". Livius.org. 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
18. Servius' commentary on Virgil's Bucolics, 6:41
19. Hellanicus, FGrH 4 F 117, quoted by the scholia to Pindar, Olympia 9.62b: "Hellanicus says that the chest didn't touch down on Parnassus, but by Othrys in Thessaly.
20. Parker, Janet; Stanton, Julie, eds. (2008) [2003]. "Greek and Roman Mythology". Mythology: Myths, Legends, & Fantasies (Reprinted ed.). Lane Cove, NSW, Australia: Global Book Publishing. pp. 32–35. ISBN 978-1-74048-091-8.
21. The manuscripts transmit scythea, "Scythian", rather than Sisythus, which is conjectural.
22. Lucian. De Dea Syria. 12-13.
23. Dionysius of Halicarnassensis, The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis, volume 1
24. Plutarch. Life of Pyrrhus. 1.
25. Lemprière, John. Bibliotheca Classica, page 475.
26. George, Andrew R. (2008). "Shattered tablets and tangled threads: Editing Gilgamesh, then and now". Aramazd. Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 3: 11. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
27. George, A. R. (2003). The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford University Press. pp. 70–. ISBN 978-0-19-927841-1. Retrieved 8 November 2012.
28. Rendsburg, Gary. "The Biblical flood story in the light of the Gilgamesh flood account," in Gilgamesh and the world of Assyria, eds Azize, J & Weeks, N. Peters, 2007, p. 117
29. Wexler, Robert (2001). Ancient Near Eastern Mythology.
30. The Stromateis (Book 1), Chapter 21.
Sources
• Hesiod, Catalogue of Women fragments 2–7 and 234 (7th or 6th century BC)
• Hecataeus of Miletus, frag. 341 (500 BC)
• Pindar, Olympian Odes 9 (466 BC)
• Plato, "Timaeus" 22B, "Critias" 112A (4th century BC)
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 3.1086 (3rd century BC)
• Virgil, Georgics 1.62 (29 BC)
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae 153; Poeticon astronomicon 2.29 (c. 20 BC)
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.17.3 (c. 15 BC)
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.318ff.; 7.356 (c. 8 AD)
• Strabo, Geographica, 9.4 (c. 23 AD)
• Bibliotheca 1.7.2 (c. 1st century AD?)
• Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, 1 (75 AD)
• Lucian, De Dea Syria 12, 13, 28, 33 (2nd century AD)
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.38.1 (2nd century AD)
• Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3.211; 6.367 (c. 500 AD)
References
• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica translated by Robert Cooper Seaton (1853-1915), R. C. Loeb Classical Library Volume 001. London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1912. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. George W. Mooney. London. Longmans, Green. 1912. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities. English translation by Earnest Cary in the Loeb Classical Library, 7 volumes. Harvard University Press, 1937-1950. Online version at Bill Thayer's Web Site
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitatum Romanarum quae supersunt, Vol I-IV. . Karl Jacoby. In Aedibus B.G. Teubneri. Leipzig. 1885. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Astronomica from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Hesiod, Catalogue of Women from Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. London: William Heinemann, 1914. Online version at theio.com
• Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca translated by William Henry Denham Rouse (1863-1950), from the Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca. 3 Vols. W.H.D. Rouse. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1940-1942. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Pindar, Odes translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien. 1990. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Pindar, The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments with an Introduction and an English Translation by Sir John Sandys, Litt.D., FBA. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1937. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Plato, Critias in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available at the same website.
• Plato, Timaeus in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available at the same website.
• Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives. With an English Translation by Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1920. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available at the same website.
• Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses translated by Brookes More (1859-1942). Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses. Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Publius Vergilius Maro, Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics of Vergil. J. B. Greenough. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1900. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Lucian, The Syrian goddess; being a translation of Lucian's De dea Syria, with a life of Lucian by Herbert A. Strong. Edited with notes and an introd. by John Garstang. London: Constable & Company Ltd. 1913. Online version at the Internet Archive. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library
• Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. Edition by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Strabo, Geographica edited by A. Meineke. Leipzig: Teubner. 1877. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
External links
• Ancient Greece portal
• Myths portal
• 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.
• Images of Deucalion and Pyrrha in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
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Bk 1:313-347 Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha
Phocis, a fertile country when it was still land, separates Aonia from Oeta, though at that time it was part of the sea, a wide expanse of suddenly created water. There Mount Parnassus lifts its twin steep summits to the stars, its peaks above the clouds. When Deucalion and his wife landed here in their small boat, everywhere else being drowned by the waters, they worshipped the Corycian nymphs, the mountain gods, and the goddess of the oracles, prophetic Themis. No one was more virtuous or fonder of justice than he was, and no woman showed greater reverence for the gods. When Jupiter saw the earth covered with the clear waters, and that only one man was left of all those thousands of men, only one woman left of all those thousands of women, both innocent and both worshippers of the gods, he scattered the clouds and mist, with the north wind, and revealed the heavens to the earth and the earth to the sky. It was no longer an angry sea, since the king of the oceans putting aside his three-pronged spear calmed the waves, and called sea-dark Triton, showing from the depths his shoulders thick with shells, to blow into his echoing conch and give the rivers and streams the signal to return. He lifted the hollow shell that coils from its base in broad spirals, that shell that filled with his breath in mid-ocean makes the eastern and the western shores sound. So now when it touched the god’s mouth, and dripping beard, and sounded out the order for retreat, it was heard by all the waters on earth and in the ocean, and all the waters hearing it were checked. Now the sea has shorelines, the brimming rivers keep to their channels, the floods subside, and hills appear. Earth rises, the soil increasing as the water ebbs, and finally the trees show their naked tops, the slime still clinging to their leaves.
Bk 1:348-380 They ask Themis for help
The world was restored. But when Deucalion saw its emptiness, and the deep silence of the desolate lands, he spoke to Pyrrha, through welling tears. ‘Wife, cousin, sole surviving woman, joined to me by our shared race, our family origins, then by the marriage bed, and now joined to me in danger, we two are the people of all the countries seen by the setting and the rising sun, the sea took all the rest. Even now our lives are not guaranteed with certainty: the storm clouds still terrify my mind. How would you feel now, poor soul, if the fates had willed you to be saved, but not me? How could you endure your fear alone? Who would comfort your tears? Believe me, dear wife, if the sea had you, I would follow you, and the sea would have me too. If only I, by my father’s arts, could recreate earth’s peoples, and breathe life into the shaping clay! The human race remains in us. The gods willed it that we are the only examples of mankind left behind.’ He spoke and they wept, resolving to appeal to the sky-god, and ask his help by sacred oracles. Immediately they went side by side to the springs of Cephisus that, though still unclear, flowed in its usual course. When they had sprinkled their heads and clothing with its watery libations, they traced their steps to the temple of the sacred goddess, whose pediments were green with disfiguring moss, her altars without fire. When they reached the steps of the sanctuary they fell forward together and lay prone on the ground, and kissing the cold rock with trembling lips, said ‘If the gods wills soften, appeased by the prayers of the just, if in this way their anger can be deflected, Themis tell us by what art the damage to our race can be repaired, and bring help, most gentle one, to this drowned world!’
Bk 1:381-415 The human race is re-created
The goddess was moved, and uttered oracular speech: ‘Leave the temple and with veiled heads and loosened clothes throw behind you the bones of your great mother!’ For a long time they stand there, dumbfounded. Pyrrha is first to break the silence: she refuses to obey the goddess’s command. Her lips trembling she asks for pardon, fearing to offend her mother’s spirit by scattering her bones. Meanwhile they reconsider the dark words the oracle gave, and their uncertain meaning, turning them over and over in their minds. Then Prometheus’s son comforted Epimetheus’s daughter with quiet words: ‘Either this idea is wrong, or, since oracles are godly and never urge evil, our great mother must be the earth: I think the bones she spoke about are stones in the body of the earth. It is these we are told to throw behind us.’
Though the Titan’s daughter is stirred by her husband’s thoughts, still hope is uncertain: they are both so unsure of the divine promptings; but what harm can it do to try? They descended the steps, covered their heads and loosened their clothes, and threw the stones needed behind them. The stones, and who would believe it if it were not for ancient tradition, began to lose their rigidity and hardness, and after a while softened, and once softened acquired new form. Then after growing, and ripening in nature, a certain likeness to a human shape could be vaguely seen, like marble statues at first inexact and roughly carved. The earthy part, however, wet with moisture, turned to flesh; what was solid and inflexible mutated to bone; the veins stayed veins; and quickly, through the power of the gods, stones the man threw took on the shapes of men, and women were remade from those thrown by the woman. So the toughness of our race, our ability to endure hard labour, and the proof we give of the source from which we are sprung.
Bk 1:416-437 Other species are generated
Earth spontaneously created other diverse forms of animal life. After the remaining moisture had warmed in the sun’s fire, the wet mud of the marshlands swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished by life-giving soil as if in a mother’s womb, grew, and in time acquired a nature. So, when the seven-mouthed Nile retreats from the drowned fields and returns to its former bed, and the fresh mud boils in the sun, farmers find many creatures as they turn the lumps of earth. Amongst them they see some just spawned, on the edge of life, some with incomplete bodies and number of limbs, and often in the same matter one part is alive and the other is raw earth. In fact when heat and moisture are mixed they conceive, and from these two things the whole of life originates. And though fire and water fight each other, heat and moisture create everything, and this discordant union is suitable for growth. So when the earth muddied from the recent flood glowed again heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters.
Bk 1:438-472 Phoebus kills the Python and sees Daphne
Indeed, though she would not have desired to, she then gave birth to you, great Python, covering so great an area of the mountain slopes, a snake not known before, a terror to the new race of men. The archer god, with lethal shafts that he had only used before on fleeing red deer and roe deer, with a thousand arrows, almost emptying his quiver, destroyed the creature, the venom running out from its black wounds. Then he founded the sacred Pythian games, celebrated by contests, named from the serpent he had conquered. There the young winners in boxing, in foot and chariot racing, were honoured with oak wreaths. There was no laurel as yet, so Phoebus crowned his temples, his handsome curling hair, with leaves of any tree.
-- Metamorphoses, by Ovid