DEUCALION
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 nine 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 Find. Ol. ix. 64 ; Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. vi. 41; Hygin. 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 ( Description of Greece by Pausanias Book 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. (Description of Greece by Pausanias x)
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 them 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 (Pindar, Olympian Odes), or at Cymis (Pindar, Olympian Odes), where in later times the tomb of Pyrrha was shewn. Concerning the whole story, see Apollodorus I; Metamorphoses by Ovid, etc.
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. ( Description of Greece by Pausanias Book 1) 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. (The Iliad of Homer xiii. Apollodorus III)
3. A son of Hyperasius and Hypso, and brother of Amphion. (Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica; comp. The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius)
4. A son of Heracles by a daughter of Thespius. (Hygin. Fab. 162.)
5. A Trojan, who was slain by Achilles. (The Iliad of Homer. xx)
From Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and MythologyFrom Apollodorus III
Minos, residing in Crete, passed laws, and married Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun and Perseis but Asclepiades says that his wife was Crete, daughter of Asterius. He begat sons, to wit, Catreus, Deucalion, Glaucus, and Androgeus: and daughters, to wit, Acalle, Xenodice, Ariadne, Phaedra and by a nymph Paria he had Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses, and Philolaus and by Dexithea he had Euxanthius.
From Apollodorus Library Book 3. Continued
When Cecrops died, Cranaus came to the throne he was a son of the soil, and it was in his time that the flood in the age of Deucalion is said to have taken place.
[1.17] Theseus afterwards received from Deucalion in marriage Phaedra, daughter of Minos; and when her marriage was being celebrated, the Amazon that had before been married to him appeared in arms with her Amazons, and threatened to kill the assembled guests. But they hastily closed the doors and killed her. However, some say that she was slain in battle by Theseus.
From The Iliad of Homer. Book XIII
On this Meriones, peer of Mars, went to the tent and got himself a spear of bronze. He then followed after Idomeneus, big with great deeds of valour. As when baneful Mars sallies forth to battle, and his son Panic so strong and dauntless goes with him, to strike terror even into the heart of a hero--the pair have gone from Thrace to arm themselves among the Ephyri or the brave Phlegyans, but they will not listen to both the contending hosts, and will give victory to one side or to the other--even so did Meriones and Idomeneus, captains of men, go out to battle clad in their bronze armour. Meriones was first to speak. "Son of Deucalion," said he, "where would you have us begin fighting? On the right wing of the host, in the centre, or on the left wing, where I take it the Achaeans will be weakest?"
Idomeneus answered, "There are others to defend the centre--the two Ajaxes and Teucer, who is the finest archer of all the Achaeans, and is good also in a hand-to-hand fight. These will give Hector son of Priam enough to do; fight as he may, he will find it hard to vanquish their indomitable fury, and fire the ships, unless the son of Saturn fling a firebrand upon them with his own hand. Great Ajax son of Telamon will yield to no man who is in mortal mould and eats the grain of Ceres, if bronze and great stones can overthrow him. He would not yield even to Achilles in hand-to-hand fight, and in fleetness of foot there is none to beat him; let us turn therefore towards the left wing, that we may know forthwith whether we are to give glory to some other, or he to us."
From The Catalogues of Women and Eoiae
Fragment #1 --
Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. iii. 1086:
That Deucalion was the son of Prometheus and Pronoea, Hesiod states in the first "Catalogue", as also that Hellen was the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
From The Odyssey of Homer. Book XIX
There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair land and a rich, begirt with water, and therein are many men innumerable, and ninety cities. And all have not the same speech, but there is confusion of tongues; there dwell Achaeans and there too Cretans of Crete, high of heart, and Cydonians there and Dorians of waving plumes and goodly Pelasgians. And among these cities is the mighty city Cnosus, wherein Minos when he was nine years old began to rule, he who held converse with great Zeus, and was the father of my father, even of Deucalion, high of heart.
Now Deucalion begat me and Idomeneus the prince. Howbeit, he had gone in his beaked ships up into Ilios, with the sons of Atreus; but my famed name is Aethon, being the younger of the twain and he was the first born and the better man. There I saw Odysseus, and gave him guest-gifts, for the might of the wind bare him too to Crete, as he was making for Troy land, and had driven him wandering past Malea.
According to another interpretation, however, Ragnarok and the consequent submersion of the world is only a Northern version of the Deluge. The survivors, Lif and Lifthrasir, are like Deucalion and Pyrrha, who were destined to repeople the world; and just as the shrine of Delphi alone resisted the destructive power of the great cataclysm, so Gimli stood radiant to receive the surviving gods.
We have already seen how closely the Northern giants resembled the Titans; now it only remains to mention that while the Greeks imagined that Atlas was changed into a mountain, so the giants in Germany formed the Riesengebirge, and that the avalanches were the burdens of snow which they impatiently shook off in changing their cramped positions.
