Each passage tells of, or alludes to, a flood that destroyed mankind. In Ovid and Josephus a god sends the waters to punish human wickedness and spares a righteous few: Deucalion and Pyrrha on Parnassus, Noah and his household in the ark. Plato’s Egyptian priest treats floods as one of many recurring destructions by fire and water, and Lucretius reports the story as a contest between the elements, without much belief. In St Matthew the flood is a warning: men ate and married until it came upon them.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
An Egyptian priest tells Solon that floods and fires have destroyed mankind many times, Deucalion’s among them.
… There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. … Part 1 →Lucretius mentions the tale that water once overwhelmed the lives of men, then drew back.
… And whilom water too began to win-- As goes the story--when it overwhelmed The lives of men with billows; and thereafter, When all that force of water-stuff which forth From out the infinite had risen up Did now retire, as somehow turned aside, The rain-storms stopped, and streams their fury checked. … Book 5 →Jupiter, choosing water over fire, drowns the human race with rain, rivers and the sea.
… The weapons forged by the hands of the Cyclops are laid aside; a different mode of punishment pleases him: to destroy mankind beneath the waves, and to let loose the rains from the whole tract of Heaven. At once he shuts the North Wind in the caverns of Æolus, and all those blasts which dispel the clouds drawn over the Earth; and then he sends forth the South Wind. … Book 1 →Jesus says his coming will be like the days of Noah, when the flood took men unawares.
And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Matthew 24 →God resolves to destroy mankind for its wickedness; Noah builds an ark and is saved with his family.
… Now God loved this man for his righteousness: yet he not only condemned those other men for their wickedness, but determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness; and cutting short their lives, and making their years not so many as they formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty only,12 he turned the dry land into sea; … Book 1 →