Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer)

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[2] And Prometheus had a son Deucalion.¹ He reigning in the regions about Phthia, married Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, the first woman fashioned by the gods.² And when Zeus would [p. 55] destroy the men of the Bronze Age, Deucalion by the advice of Prometheus constructed a chest,³ and having stored it with provisions he embarked in it with Pyrrha. But Zeus by pouring heavy rain from heaven flooded the greater part of Greece, so that all men were destroyed, except a few who fled to the high mountains in the neighborhood. It was then that the mountains in Thessaly parted, and that all the world outside the Isthmus and Peloponnese was overwhelmed. But Deucalion, floating in the chest over the sea for nine days and as many nights, drifted to Parnassus, and there, when the rain ceased, he landed and sacrificed to Zeus, the god of Escape. And Zeus sent Hermes to him and allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to get men. And at the bidding of Zeus he took up stones and threw them over his head, and the stones which Deucalion threw became men, and the stones which Pyrrha threw became women. Hence people were called metaphorically people ( laos) from laas, “ a stone. ”⁴ And Deucalion had children by Pyrrha, first [p. 57] Hellen, whose father some say was Zeus, and second Amphictyon, who reigned over Attica after Cranaus; and third a daughter Protogenia, who became the mother of Aethlius by Zeus.⁵

¹ The whole of the following account of Deucalion and Pyrrha is quoted, with a few trifling verbal changes, by the Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.126, who cites Apollodorus as his authority.

² As to the making of Pandora, see Hes. WD 60ff., Hes. Th. 571ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 142.

³ As to Deucalion's flood, see Lucian, De dea Syria 12ff.; Ov. Met. 1.125-415; Hyginus, Fab. 153; Serv. Verg. Ecl. 6.41; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 57ff., 99 (First Vatican Mythographer 189; Second Vatican Mythographer 73); Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i.146ff. Another person who is said to have escaped alive from the flood was a certain Cerambus: the story ran that the nymphs wafted him aloft on wings over the Thessalian mountains. See Ov. Met. 7.353ff.

⁴ Compare Pind. O. 9.41ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 153.

⁵ This passage as to the children of Deucalion is quoted by the Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiii.307, who names Apollodorus as his authority.

Cross references from Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):
deucalion [Deucalion]
deucalion [Deucalion]

This text is based on the following book(s):
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
OCLC: 28280131
ISBN: 0674991354, 0674991362

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