Myth Library · Flood Survival And Human Renewal

Deucalion and Pyrrha Survive the Flood

1 source witness · 1 source-scoped variant · reviewed 2026-08-30

Warned by Prometheus, Deucalion builds a chest and survives Zeus’s flood with Pyrrha; after sacrifice and a request for renewed humanity, Zeus orders the survivors to throw stones that become people.

Canonical narrative

Prometheus sees the flood before it arrives. In Pseudo-Apollodorus, Deucalion is his son, and the warning is practical: build a chest and put provisions inside. Deucalion does so with Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. Zeus opens the rain upon the Bronze race. Rivers swell, the sea rises, and most people disappear beneath the water.

The chest carries the pair for nine days and nights before it comes to rest on Parnassus. Deucalion steps out and sacrifices to Zeus as protector of flight. Hermes approaches with permission to ask for one gift. Deucalion asks that people exist again. Zeus orders him to pick up stones and throw them over his head. The stones Deucalion throws become men, and those Pyrrha throws become women.

Themis gives no oracle in Library 1.7.2, and the passage contains no riddle about the bones of a mother. Those elements belong to Ovid’s Roman Metamorphoses and remain in a separate Roman literary record. Prometheus’s role here is the warning that makes survival possible and the fatherhood that binds the flood to his name.

Episodes in this myth

Episode 1

Prometheus warns Deucalion

Prometheus tells his son to make a chest and store provisions before the flood.

Episode 2

Nine days on the water

Deucalion and Pyrrha drift for nine days and nights before landing on Parnassus.

Episode 3

People rise from stones

At Zeus’s command, Deucalion’s stones become men and Pyrrha’s stones become women.

Participants and roles

Prometheus

father and forewarner who tells Deucalion to build the chest

Deucalion

builds the chest, survives nine days of flood, and obeys Zeus’s stone-throwing command

Pyrrha

survives beside Deucalion and throws stones that become women at Zeus’s command

Zeus

sends the flood and later permits the survivors' request

Hermes

carries Zeus's permission for Deucalion to choose a gift

Source-scoped variants

Prometheus warns Deucalion

Prometheus advises the chest; Deucalion and Pyrrha survive, sacrifice, seek renewal, and throw stones at Zeus’s command.

What differs: This Greek mythographic form gives Prometheus’s warning, the nine-day voyage, Hermes’s mediation, and Zeus’s direct stone-throwing order. It does not contain Themis or the bones-of-the-mother riddle found in Ovid.

Greek Roman Imperial · Ancient Greece

Source witnesses

EXPLICIT PRIMARY · Reviewed

Library

Pseudo-Apollodorus; edited and translated by James G. Frazer · 1921

Entry Library · Book 1 · Chapter 7 · Section 2

Its authority is confined to the named passage and telling.

Open reviewed source