Myth Library · Oracle And Human Renewal

Themis Gives the Post-Flood Oracle

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

In Ovid’s Roman Metamorphoses, Deucalion and Pyrrha grieve after the flood, pray at the temple of Themis, and renew humankind by deciphering her command to cast the bones of their mother behind them.

Canonical narrative

Jupiter sees Deucalion and Pyrrha surviving without guilt and orders the flood waters withdrawn. Survival still leaves them surrounded by loss. In Ovid’s Latin poem they approach the temple of Themis, pour water over their heads and clothing, and ask how the human race can be restored. Themis answers with a command that sounds like desecration: leave the temple, cover their heads, loosen their garments, and cast behind them the bones of their great mother.

Pyrrha first refuses to violate a mother’s remains. Deucalion reasons that the goddess cannot intend sacrilege. Their great mother is Earth, and her bones are stones. They throw stones behind them; those cast by Deucalion become men and those cast by Pyrrha become women. The riddle turns grief and hard matter toward renewed life without softening the divine destruction that precedes it.

This is Roman literary reception in Metamorphoses 1.348-415. Pseudo-Apollodorus 1.7.2 gives Zeus the stone-throwing order and contains neither Themis nor the riddle. The two tellings remain separate.

Episodes in this myth

Episode 1

Themis gives the veiled command

At Themis’s temple, the grieving survivors receive a riddle whose mother is Earth and whose bones are stones.

Participants and roles

Jupiter

Roman divine ruler who sees the surviving pair and orders the flood waters withdrawn

The distinct Roman Jupiter entity preserves the poem’s cultural and linguistic boundary.

Themis

Roman literary oracle giver who veils the command to renew humankind in a riddle

This role belongs to Metamorphoses 1.348-415 and must not be projected into Library 1.7.2.

Deucalion

survivor who prays to Themis, interprets her riddle, and throws stones that become men

Ovid joins grief, prayer, interpretation, and renewal after mass death.

Pyrrha

survivor who recoils from the oracle, accepts its meaning, and throws stones that become women

Her fear of violating her mother gives the riddle its initial moral difficulty.

Source-scoped variants

Ovid’s oracle of Themis after the flood

Deucalion and Pyrrha pray at Themis’s temple, receive her veiled command, and understand the mother’s bones as stones of Earth.

What differs: Themis, her temple, and the bones-of-the-mother riddle belong to Ovid’s Roman poem. Pseudo-Apollodorus instead makes Zeus order the throwing of stones without Themis.

Roman Augustan Literature · Delphi

Source witnesses

EXPLICIT PRIMARY · Reviewed

Metamorphoses

Ovid; Hugo Magnus Latin edition and Brookes More translation · 1922

Entry Metamorphoses · Book 1 · Line 348-415

Ovid gives Themis the post-flood oracle and bones-of-the-mother riddle. The accessed edition is Brookes More 1922 English eng3; the witness language is Latin.

Open reviewed source