DEUCALION

In Greek mythology, Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, were the ancestors of the entire human race. Like many similar figures in the myths of other cultures, they were the only survivors of a flood sent by the gods to wipe out humanity.

Deucalion was the son of Prometheus, and a

Grandchild of the Titan lapetus and his niece, the Ocean nymph Clymene. Iapetus and Clymene had four sons: Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetios.

Prometheus was a frequent benefactor of human beings. For example, he is credited with introducing fire and pharmaceuticals to them. His son kept up the philanthropic tradition: Deucalion became a kind of re-founder of the human race in Greece. A survivor of an early catastrophe

Below: Deucalion and Pyrrha (c. 1520) by Italian painter Domenico Beccafumi (c. 1486—1551).The painting depicts the pair throwing stones behind them, from which new humans are created.

That wiped out all or most of the early descendants of the first human families, Deucalion became the father from whom nearly all subsequent humans were descended. Deucalion married his cousin Pyrrha, the daughter of his uncle Epimetheus. (In some versions of the story, Pyrrha’s mother was the first woman, Pandora.) Thus Deucalion and Pyrrha are functionally equivalent not only to Noah and his wife, but also to Adam and Eve in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Zeus had become disgusted with mankind after Lycaon, the founding father of Arcadia (a region of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece), sacrificed his own son and served him in a soup at a banquet for the gods. Zeus changed Lycaon into a werewolf, but he still felt vengeful, so he decided to put an end to the whole human race by sending a great flood onto Earth.

When Prometheus heard of Zeus’s plans, he informed Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the two of them built an ark in which to try to ride out the flood. The entire Earth was then inundated by a torrential downpour, and all of mankind was drowned, although some cities, including Delphi, Megara, and Lesbos, claimed to have ancestors who escaped the flood by withdrawing to the mountains.

Deucalion and Pyrrha spent nine days afloat in their ark before the waters began to recede. Eventually they came to land on an exposed mountaintop. The place has been identified variously as Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, and Dodona, in the far northwest of Greece.

Deucalion and Pyrrha gave thanks for their deliverance by sacrificing to Zeus, the god of escape, and then set about finding how to re-create the human race. Zeus, or possibly Themis, advised them to cover their heads and throw “the bones of their mother” behind them. At first the couple wondered what that meant, but then Deucalion realized that it was a reference to the stones lying on the ground around them—the bones of Mother Earth. The stones that Deucalion threw turned into men; those that Pyrrha threw turned into women. Thus the new race of humans was a race of stone, hardy and durable. This story may be based on a pun: the Greek word for “people” is laos, the word for “stone” is laas.

Thus, ancient Greek accounts of creation place the origin of humankind before the time of Deucalion. The development of the race was then interrupted by the flood, which was sent as a punishment for errant behavior. However, although Deucalion and Pyrrha were not the very first humans, they were the survivors who started humankind over again, and most regions traced their

Deucalion of Crete

The other Deucalion in Greek myth was a son of king Minos of Crete and his wife, Pasiphae. He had a brother, Catreus, and two sisters, Ariadne and Phaedra. Deucalion became an important ally of Theseus, king of Athens.

Deucalion had a son, Idomeneus, who led the contingent of 100 ships from Crete that took the Greek army to besiege Troy under the leadership of King Agamemnon. According to some accounts, Deucalion also had a daughter whose name, Crete, was adopted by her native island. In other versions, however, Crete was the child of Asterius and Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre.

Deucalion also had at least one illegitimate son, named Molus, and according to Homer's Odyssey, another named Aethon. When Odysseus was disguised as a beggar in his palace, he introduced himself to Penelope as Aethon.

Crete was always regarded with great veneration in ancient Greece, and the Cretan character of Deucalion provides a connection between the island and some of the most important events in the mythical history of the mainland.

Below: This engraving from an 18th-century French book shows Deucalion and Pyrrha escaping Zeus’s punishment of humanity.

Ancestry back to Deucalion. In Athens, Deucalion’s son Amphictyon was regarded as third in the line of early kings (after the two earth-born kings, Cecrops and Cranaus).The link with Deucalion was so important that Athenians claimed he was buried in their city.