Recent geological discoveries have led archaeologists and other scholars to propose that what is now the Black Sea was once an enclosed freshwater lake. In about 7000 BCE, however, it burst its banks at what is now the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and opened out into the Mediterranean Sea, causing extensive flooding in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. If that is correct, the Greek and West Asian myths of a great flood may be a “folk memory” of this cataclysmic event.
Although the breach of the ancient topographical barrier between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea is an event of immense significance, the flood myths retain a broader and perhaps even greater symbolic importance. The stories can be viewed as a metaphor for one of the most fundamental preoccupations of human experience: the fear of being engulfed and swept away in a huge, elemental catastrophe. Whether such a worldwide disaster ever actually took place is thus, to some extent, a relatively minor consideration.
Deucalion is featured very little in what remains of ancient Greek art, but the theme of the great flood became popular during the Renaissance in Europe, and various Italian painters depicted topics such as the flood involving Deucalion and Pyrrha. The leading works on these themes are by Baldassare Peruzzi (1481—1536), Lo Schiavone (1522—1563), Lelio Orsi (c. 1511—1587), and Giovanni Castiglione (c. 1616—1670).The topic was also favored for a while in minor operatic works by composers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Anthony Bulloch
Bibliography
Bulfinch, Thomas. Myths of Greece and Rome. New York: Penguin, 1998.
Howatson, M. C. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
See also: Odysseus; Pandora.
World History
