174 HISTORY OF GREECE. point the ferocity of Lyka6n's character, as well a3 the cruel rites which he practised. The latter was the first who e&tablished the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykasus : he offered up a child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar. Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a wolf. 1 "Of the truth of this narrative (observes Pausanias) I feel persuaded : it has been repeated by the Arcadians from old times, and it carries probability along with it. For the men of that day, from their justice and piety, were guests and companions at table with the gods, who manifested towards them approbation when they were good, and anger if they behaved ill, in a palpable man- ner : indeed at that time there were some, who having once been men, became gods, and who yet retain their privileges as such Aristseus, the Kretan Britomartis, Herakles son of Alkmena, Am- phiaraus the son of Oikles, and Pollux and Kastor besides. We may therefore believe that Lykaon became a wild beast, and that Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, became a stone. But in my time, wickedness having enormously increased, so as to overrun the whole earth and all the cities in it, there are no farther examples of men exalted into gods, except by mere title and from adulation towards the powerful: moreover the anger of the gods falls tardily upon the wicked, and is reserved for them after their departure from hence." 1 Apollodor. iii. 8, 1. Hygin. fab. 176. Eratosthen. Catasterism. 8. Pau- san. viii. 2, 2-3. A different story respecting the immolation of the child is in Nikolaus Damask. Frag. p. 41, OrelJi. Lykaon is mentioned as the first founder of the temple of Zeus Lykaeus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662; but nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its consequences. In the historical times, the festival and solemnities of the Lykaea do not seem to have been distinguished materially from the other agones of Greece (Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 104; Nem. x. 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals in the army of Cyrus the younger, celebrated the solemnity with great mag- nificence in the march through Asia Minor (Xen. Anab. i. 2, 10). But the fable of the human sacrifice, and the subsequent transmutation of the person who had eaten human food into a wolf, continued to be told in connection with them (Plato, de Republic, viii. c. 15. p. 417). Compare Pliny, H. N. viii. 34. This passage of Plato seems to afford distinct indication that the practice of offering human victims at the altar of the Lykaean Zeus waa neither prevalent nor recent, but at most only traditional and antiquated* and it therefore limits the sense or invalidates the authority of the Pseudo- Platonic dialogue, Minos, c. 5.
