Deucalion (Ancient Greek: Δευκαλίων) is a Thessalonian king who is the son of the Titan Prometheus and the Oceanid Pronoia (or Hesione and Clymene), and the husband of Pyrrha and father of Hellen.
Etymology[]
According to folk etymology, the name derives from Ancient Greek δεῦκος (deûkos), variation of γλεῦκος (gleûkos, “sweet new wine, musk, sweetness”), and ἁλιεύς (halieús, “sailor, seaman, fisher”), from ἅλς (háls).
Mythology[]
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, King Lycaon 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 catastrophic flood, 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, he used this device to survive the great flood with his wife and cousin, Pyrrha.
The most complete accounts are given by Ovid, in Book 1 of his Metamorphoses (late 1 BCE to early 1 CE), and by the mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century CE). 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 or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.
Deucalion and Pyrrha from a 1562 version of Ovid's Metamorphoses
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" was 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. These people were later called the Leleges who populated Locris. This can be related to Pindar's account that recounted "Pyrrha and Deucalion came down from Parnassus and made their first home, and without the marriage-bed they founded a unified race of stone offspring, and the stones gave the people their name."
Deucalion and Pyrrha by Giovanni Maria Bottalla
| Heroes in Greek mythology | |
|---|---|
| Heracles • Theseus • Perseus • Odysseus • Oedipus • Orpheus • Jason and the Argonauts • Nestor • Atalanta • Cadmus • Hector • Memnon • Achilleus • Daedalus • Bellerophon • Deucalion • Peleus • Kastor and Polydeukes • Palamḗdēs • Diomedes • Meleager • Telamon • Ajax • Philoctetes • Laertes | |