Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios 71

veils the ugly fact by a decent circumlocution : ' On this altar they
offer secret sacrifices to Lycaean Zeus, but I did not care to pry
into the details of the sacrifice. Be it as it is and has been from
the beginning1.'

The concurrent testimony of these writers may be held to
prove that Zeus Lykaios was indeed served with human flesh,
but it hardly enables us to determine how long this hideous
custom survived. Theophrastos, who succeeded Aristoteles as
head of the Peripatetic school in 322 B.C., says — 'up to the
present time'; and he is in general a trustworthy witness. But
whether we can infer from the guarded language of Pausanias
that five centuries later, in the reign of the refined and philo-
sophical Marcus Aurelius, the same gruesome rite was still kept
up seems to me at least very questionable2. It would of course
be talked about for many generations after it had been as an
actual practice mitigated, superseded, or simply discontinued.

We should like to know more of the cannibal who was turned
into a wolf. And here fortunately further evidence is forthcoming.
We have in fact three parallel accounts, which deserve to be studied
side by side. They unfold a most remarkable sequel:

Pliny
nat. hist. 8. 81—82.

' Euanthes, who holds
a high place among'the
authors of Greece, reports
the following tradition as
derived from Arcadian
writings. A man belong-
ing to a clan descended
from a certain Anthos is
chosen by lot and led to
a particular pool in that
locality. Here he hangs
his clothes on an oak-tree,
swims across, and goes
off into desert places,
where he is transformed
into a wolf and for nine
years associates with

Saint Augustine
de civ. Dei 18. 17.

' To prove this, Varro
narrates other equally
incredible tales—that of
the notorious magician
Kirke, who likewise
changed the comrades
of Odysseus into ani-
mals, and that of the
Arcadians, who were
taken by lot, went across
a particular pool, and
there turning into wolves
lived with beasts like
themselves in the desert
places of that locality.
But, if they did not feed
on human flesh, then

Pausanias
6. 8. 2.

1 Paus. 8. 38. 7 trans. J. G. Frazer.

2 From Plin. nat. hist. 8. 82 Scopas qui Olympionicas scripsit narrat Demaenetum
Parrhasium in sacrificio, quod Arcades Iovi Lycaeo humana etiatntum hostia faciebant,
immolati pueri exta degustasse etc. {infra p. 72 n. 3) E. Meyer Forschungen zur alien
Geschichte Halle 1892 i. 53 n. 1 infers that the human sacrifice, still kept up in the days
of Demainetos, had been already abandoned when the Olympionicae was written.