Deucalion
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Deucalionis Proper-name noun: masculine genitive singular of Deucalion
- son of Prometheus, king of Phthia, in Thessaly, and husband of Pyrrha. He is famous on account of the deluge sent in his days by Jupiter, and as the progenitor of a new race of men, Ov. M. 1, 318 sq.; Hyg. Fab. 153; Just. 2, 6; Verg. G. 1, 62 al.: nimiae Deucalionis aquae, Deucalion's deluge, Ov. F. 4, 794; Prop. 2, 32, 53 (3, 30, 53 M.).
- —Hence, Deucălĭōnēus, a, um, adj., of Deucalion: undae, Ov. M. 7, 356: imbres, Luc. 1, 653: cautes, Col. poët. 10, 67.
(Δευκαλίων).
1. A son of Prometheus and Clymene. He was king in Phthia, and married to Pyrrha. When Zeus, after the treatment he had received from Lycaon, had resolved to destroy the degenerate race of men who inhabited the earth, Deucalion, on the advice of his father, built a ship, and carried into it stores of provisions; and when Zeus sent a flood all over Hellas, which destroyed all its inhabitants, Deucalion and Pyrrha alone were saved. After their ship had been floating about for time days, it landed, according to the common tradition, on mount Parnassus; others made it land on mount Othrys in Thessaly, on mount Athos, or even on Aetna in Sicily. (Schol. ad Pind. Ol. 9.64; Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. 6.41; Hyg. Fab. 153.) These differences in the story are probably nothing but local traditions; in the same manner it was believed in several places that Deucalion and Pyhrra were not the only persons that were saved. Thus Megarus, a son of Zeus, escaped by following the screams of cranes, which led him to the summit of mount Gerania (Paus. 1.40.1); and the inhabitants of Delphi were said to have been saved by following the howling of wolves, which led them to the summit of Parnassus, where they founded Lycoreia. (Paus. 10.6.2.) When the waters had subsided, Deucalion offered up a sacrifice to Zeus Phyxius, that is, the helper of fugitives, and thereupon the god sent Hermes to him to promise that he would grant any wish which Deucalion might entertain. Deucalion prayed that Zeus might restore mankind. According to the more common tradition, Deucalion and Pyrrha went to the sanctuary of Themis, and prayed for the same thing. The goddess bade therm cover their heads and throw the bones of their mother behind them in walking from the temple. After some doubts and scruples respecting the meaning of this command, they agreed in interpreting the bones of their mother to mean the stones of the earth; and they accordingly threw stones behind them, and from those thrown by Deucalion there sprang up men, and from those of Pyrrha women. Deucalion then descended from Parnassus, and built his first abode at Opus (Pind. O. 9.46), or at Cynus (Strab. ix. p.425; Schol. ad Pind. Ol. 9.64), where in later times the tomb of Pyrrha was shewn. Concerning the whole story, see Apollod. 1.7.2; Ov. Met. 1.260, &c. There was also a tradition that Deucalion had lived at Athens, and the sanctuary of the Olympian Zeus there was regarded as his work, and his tomb also was shewn there in the neighbourhood of the sanctuary. (Paus. 1.18.8.) Deucalion was by Pyrrha the father of Hellen, Amphictyon, Protogeneia, and others. Strabo (ix. p.435) states, that near the coast of Phthiotis there were two small islands of the name of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
2. A son of Minos and Pasiphae or Crete, was an Argonaut and one of the Calydonian hunters. He was the father of Idomeneus and Molus. (Hom. Il. 13.451; Apollod. iii. ]. § 2, 3.1 ; Diod. 4.60; IHygin. Fub. 14, 173; Serv. ad Aen. 3.121.)
3. A son of Hyperasius and Hypso, and brother of Amphion. (V. Fl. 1.366; comp. Apollon. 1.176.)
4. A son of Heracles by a daughter of Thespius. (Hyg. Fab. 162.)
5. A Trojan, who was slain by Achilles. (Hom. Il. 20.477.) [L.S]
(Δευκαλίων). The son of Prometheus and Clymené, or of Prometheus and Pandora, and sometimes called the father (Thuc.i. 3), sometimes the brother of Hellen, the reputed founder of the Greek nation. His home was Thessaly, from which, according to general tradition, he was driven to Parnassus by a great deluge (Apollod.i.7.2), which, however, according to Aristotle (Meteorol. i. 14) occurred between Dodona and the Acheloüs. The Greek legend respecting this memorable event is as follows: Deucalion was married to Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. When Zeus designed to destroy the brazen race of men on account of their impiety, Deucalion, by the advice of his father, made himself an ark (λάρναξ), and, putting provisions into it, entered it with his wife Pyrrha. Zeus then poured rain from heaven and inundated the greater part of Greece, so that all the people, except a few who escaped to the lofty mountains, perished in the waves. At the same time, the mountains of Thessaly were burst through by the flood, and all Greece without the Isthmus, as well as all the Peloponnesus, were overflowed. Deucalion was carried along the sea in his ark for nine days and nights, until he reached Mount Parnassus. By this time the rain had ceased, and, leaving his ark, he sacrificed to Zeus the flight-giver (Φύξιος), who sent Hermes, desiring him to ask what he would. His request was to have the earth replenished with men. By the direction of Zeus, thereupon, he and his wife flung stones behind them, and those which Deucalion cast became men, and those thrown by Pyrrha women; from which circumstance the Greeks derived the name for “people” (λαός) from λᾶας, “a stone” (Apollod.i.7.2).
This narrative restricts the general deluge to Greece proper, perhaps originally to Thessaly; and it most incongruously represents others as having escaped as well as Deucalion; while at the same time, it intimates that he and his wife alone had been preserved in the catastrophe. The circumstance of the ark is thought by some to be borrowed from the Mosaic account, and to have been learned at Alexandria, for we elsewhere find the dove noticed. “The mythologists,” says Plutarch, “inform us that a dove let fly out of the ark was to Deucalion a sign of bad weather if it came in again, of good weather if it flew away” ( De Sollert. An.). The sacrifice and the appearance of Hermes likewise strongly remind us of Noah. (See, also, the article Apamea.) The Latin writers take a different view of the deluge. According to them it overspread the whole earth, and all animal life perished except Deucalion and Pyrrha, whom Ovid, who gives a very poetical account of this great catastrophe, conveys in a small boat to the summit of Parnassus; while others make Aetna or Athos the mountain which yielded them a refuge (Ovid, Met. i. 253 foll.; Hyg. Fab. 153; Serv. ad Eclog. vi. 41). According to Ovid they consulted the ancient oracle of Themis respecting the restoration of mankind, and received the following response: “Depart from the fane, veil your heads, loosen your girded vestments, and cast behind you the great bones of your parent” (Met. i. 381 foll.). They were at first horror-struck at such an act of impiety, but at length Deucalion understood the words of the oracle as referring to the earth, the common mother of all. Rationalizing mythologists make the story an allegory in which Deucalion represents water (as if from δεύω), and Pyrrha, fire (πῦρ). The meaning of the legend will then be, that when the passage through which the Peneus carries off the waters that run into the vale of Thessaly, which is on all sides shut in by lofty mountains, had been closed by some accident, they overflowed the whole of its surface, till the action of subterranean fire opened a way for them. According to this view of the subject, then, the deluge of Deucalion was merely a local one; and it was not until the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, when the Hebrew Scriptures became known to the Greeks, that some features borrowed from the universal deluge of Noah were incorporated into the story of the Thessalian flood. See Harcourt, Doctrine of the Deluge (London, 1838); Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments (London, 1886); Motais, Le Déluge Biblique (Paris, 1887).
- Paus. 1.17.6
- Hdt. 1.56
- son of Prometheus, husband of Pyrrha: Apollod. 1.7.1
- saved from great flood: Apollod. 1.7.2
- makes men out of stones: Apollod. 1.7.2
- his children: Apollod. 1.7.2, Apollod. 1.7.3
- the family of: Apollod. 1.9.28
- the flood of, in the reign of Nyctimus: Apollod. 3.8.1; Paus. 1.18.7, Paus. 1.40.1, Paus. 5.8.1, Paus. 10.6.2
- the flood said to be caused by the impiety of Lycaon's sons: Apollod. 3.8.1
- father of Orestheus: Paus. 10.38.1
- father of Amphictyon: Apollod. 3.14.5
- the flood in the age of: Apollod. 1.9.12
- D. founds sanctuary of Zeus: Paus. 1.18.8
- his grave at Athens: Paus. 1.18.8
- Apollod. 3.1.2
- his children: Apollod. 3.2.2
- father of Idomeneus: Apollod. E.3.11