Lycaon, in
Greek mythology, son of Pelasgus
?, the mythical first king of Arcadia
?.
He, or his fifty impious sons, entertained
Zeus and set before him a dish of
human flesh ; the god pushed away the dish in disgust and either killed the king
and his sons by lightning or turned them into
wolves (Apollodorus
? iii. 8 ;
Ovid,
Metamorphoses i. 198). Some say that Lycaon slew and dished up his own
son Nyctimus
? (Clem. Alex.
Protrept. ii. 36 ; Nonnus,
Dionys.
xviii. 20 ; Arnobius iv. 24). The deluge was said to have been sent by Zeus in
the time of Deucalion
? in consequence of the sons' impiety. Pausanias
? (viii. 2)
says that Lycaon sacrificed a child to Zeus on the altar on mount
Lycaeus, and
immediately after the sacrifice was turned into a wolf. This gave rise to the
story that a man was turned into a wolf at each annual sacrifice to Zeus
Lycacus, but recovered his human form if he abstained from human flesh for ten
years. The oldest city, the oldest cultus (that of Zeus Lycaeus), and the first
civilization of Arcadia are attributed to Lycaon. His story has been variously
interpreted. According to Weizsäcker, he was an old Pelasgian or
pre-Hellenic god, to whom human sacrifice was offered, bearing a non-Hellenic
name similar to Avkos, whence the story originated of his metamorphosis into a
wolf. His cult was driven out by that of the Hellenic Zeus, and Lycaon himself
was afterwards represented as an evil spirit, who had insulted the new deity by
setting human flesh before him. Robertson Smith considers the sacrifices offered
to the wolf-Zeus in Arcadia to have been originally cannibal feasts of a
wolf-tribe, who recognized the wolf as their totem
?. Usener and others identify
Lycaon with Zeus Lycaeus, the god of light, who slays his son Nyctimus (the
dark) or is succeeded by him, in allusion to the perpetual succession of night
and day. According to Ed. Meyer, the belief that Zeus Lycaeus accepted human
sacrifice in the form of a wolf was the origin of the myth that Lycaon, the
founder of his cult, became a wolf,
i.e. participated in the nature of
the god by the act of sacrifice, as did all who afterwards duly performed it.
initial entry from a 1911 encyclopedia