Ancient Greek flood myths

Plato makes reference to great floods in several of his dialogues, including Timaeus, Critias, and Laws. In Timaeus (22) and in Critias (111–112) he describes the "great deluge of all", specifying the one survived by Deucalion and Pyrrha, as having been preceded by 9,000 years of history before the time of Solon, during the 10th millennium BCE. In Laws, Book III,[2] argues that a great flood had occurred ten thousand years[3] before his time, as opposed to only "one or two thousand years that have elapsed" since the discovery of music, and other inventions. Plato also alludes to a well-known event of great destruction, in Statesman (270), where "only a small part of the human race survives",[4] presumably also referring to the flood of Deucalion.[2] In addition, the texts report that "many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years" since Athens and Atlantis were preeminent.[5]

The Ogygian flood is so called because it occurred in the time of Ogyges,[6] a mythical king of Attica. The name Ogyges and Ogygian is synonymous with "primeval", "primal" and "earliest dawn". Others say he was the founder and king of Thebes. In many traditions the Ogygian flood is said to have covered the whole world and was so devastating that Attica remained without kings until the reign of Cecrops.[7]

The Deucalion legend as told by the Bibliotheca has some similarity to other deluge myths such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (which Stephanie West writes was likely the source of this myth[8]); the story of Noah's Ark in the Judeo-Christian telling; and the story of Manu's ark in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions. The Titan Prometheus advised his son Deucalion to build a chest. All other men perished except for a few who escaped to high mountains. The mountains in Thessaly were parted, and all the world beyond the Isthmus and Peloponnese was overwhelmed. Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, after floating in the chest for nine days and nights, landed on Parnassus. An older version of the story told by Hellanicus has Deucalion's "ark" landing on Mount Othrys in Thessaly. Another account has him landing on a peak, probably Phouka, in Argolis, later called Nemea. When the rains ceased, he sacrificed to Zeus. Then, at the bidding of Zeus, he threw stones behind him, and they became men, and the stones Pyrrha threw became women. The Bibliotheca gives this as an etymology for Greek Laos (λᾱός, 'people') as derived from laas ('stone').[9] The Megarians told that Megarus, son of Zeus and a Sithnid nymph, escaped Deucalion's flood by swimming to the top of Mount Gerania, guided by the cries of cranes.[10]

This one has the same basic story line. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dardanus left Pheneus in Arcadia to colonize a land in the North-East Aegean Sea. When Dardanus' deluge occurred, the land was flooded and the mountain where he and his family survived formed the island of Samothrace. He left Samothrace on an inflated skin to the opposite shores of Asia Minor and settled on Mount Ida. Due to the fear of another flood, they refrained from building a city and lived in the open for fifty years. His grandson Tros eventually moved from the highlands down to a large plain, on a hill that had many rivers flowing down from Ida above. There he built a city, which was named Troy after him.[12] Today, we call the area "the Dardanelles" (formerly known as Hellespont), a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey that connects the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. The name is derived from Dardanus, an ancient city on the Asian shore of the strait, whose name was mythologized as deriving from Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra.