Deucalion facts for kids

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. He is closely connected with a 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" and from ἁλιεύς, haliéus, i.e. "sailor, seaman, fisher". His wife Pyrrha's name derives from the adjective πυρρός, -ά, -όν, pyrrhós, -á, -ón, i.e. "flame-colored, orange".

Family

Of Deucalion's birth, the Argonautica (from the 3rd century BC) stated:

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].

According to Bibliotheca, Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon. Another account, adds a daughter Melanthea to the list of the couple’s progeny. This daughter, also called Melantho, became the mother of Delphus by Poseidon.

Deucalion’s and Pyrrha’s children are apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one son, Hellen. Their descendants were said to have dwelt and ruled in Thessaly.

One source mentioned three sons of Deucalion and his wife: Orestheus, Marathonios and Pronous (father of Hellen). Lastly, Deucalion sired a son, no mention of the mother, Candybus who gave his name to the town of Candyba in Lycia.

Mythology

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

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, 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. Like the biblical Noah and the Mesopotamian counterpart Utnapishtim, he used this device to survive the great flood with his wife, Pyrrha.

The most complete accounts are given by Ovid, in 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 Etna in Sicily, or Mount Athos in Chalkidiki, or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.

Hyginus mentioned 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" 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."

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) 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.

Variant stories

On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated Deucalion's parents to be Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and mentioned nothing about a flood but instead named 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 survived. The only extant fragment of his to mention Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but named him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia. The much later geographer Pausanias, following on this tradition, named Deucalion as a king of Ozolian Locris and father of Orestheus.

Plutarch mentioned a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona, Epirus; while Strabo asserted that they lived at Cynus, and that her grave was still to be found there, while his may be seen at Athens. This can be related to an account that after the deluge, Deucalion, founder and king of Lycoreia in Mt. Parnassus was said to have fled from his kingdom to Athens with his sons Hellen and Amphictyon during the reign of King Cranaus. Shortly thereafter, Deucalion died there and was said to have been buried near Athens. During his stay in there, he was credited with having built the ancient sanctuary of Olympian Zeus. Additionally, Strabo mentioned a pair of Aegean islands named after the couple.