Ovid’s Account of the Deluge From Indo-European Mythology

Most students of the Bible’s account of the Great Flood or Deluge are aware that many peoples of the earth had early knowledge of the Deluge before they had contact with Christianity.

One interesting account based on Roman and Greek mythology comes from the Roman poet Ovid. There appear to be many online texts of Ovid’s Deluge account, but one can be found at Mythology.us. Following are some excerpts that might be of interest to students of the Bible.

From Book I:274-292, “The Flood”:

Neptune himself strikes the ground with his trident, so that it trembles, and with that blow opens up channels for the waters. Overflowing, the rivers rush across the open plains, sweeping away at the same time not just orchards, flocks, houses and human beings, but sacred temples and their contents. Any building that has stood firm, surviving the great disaster undamaged, still has its roof drowned by the highest waves, and its towers buried below the flood. And now the land and sea are not distinct, all is the sea, the sea without a shore.

From Book I:313-347, “Deucalion [the Greek equivalent of Noah] and his wife Pyrrha”:

Phocis, a fertile country when it was still land, separates Aonia from Oeta, though at that time it was part of the sea, a wide expanse of suddenly created water. There Mount Parnassus lifts its twin steep summits to the stars, its peaks above the clouds. When Deucalion and his wife landed here in their small boat, everywhere else being drowned by the waters, they worshipped the Corycian nymphs, the mountain gods, and the goddess of the oracles, prophetic Themis. No one was more virtuous or fonder of justice than he was, and no woman showed greater reverence for the gods. When Jupiter saw the earth covered with the clear waters, and that only one man was left of all those thousands of men, only one woman left of all those thousands of women, both innocent and both worshippers of the gods, he scattered the clouds and mist, with the north wind, and revealed the heavens to the earth and the earth to the sky.

ARK — 12 September 2010