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

Human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios 77

an oak-tree sacred to Zeus Lykaios grew beside the spring Hagno.
The primitive cults of Greece, as of other lands, constantly
associated a holy tree with a holy well.

The simple folk of Arkadia were acorn-eaters1. Pelasgos, their
first king,—says Pausanias2—'introduced as food the fruit of oak-
trees, not of all oaks, but only the acorns of the phegos oak. Since
his time some of the people have adhered so closely to this diet
that even the Pythian priestess, in forbidding the Lacedaemonians
to touch the land of the Arcadians, spoke the following verses:—

There are many acorn-eating men in Arcadia

Who will prevent you; though I do not grudge it you.'

Plutarch goes further and declares that there was ' a certain
kinship' between the Arcadians and the oak-tree : they believed
that they were the first of men to spring from the ground, just as
it was the first of trees3. But the relation of the oak to Zeus on
the one hand and to his devotees on the other is a subject to
which we shall have to return. For the present I pass on, noting
merely that the existence of a clan whose business it was to
promote vegetation at an ancient centre of oak-worship, if viewed
in connexion with this alleged ' kinship' between the worshippers
and the tree, is a phenomenon curiously suggestive of totemism.

A rite so unusual and impressive as the human sacrifice on
Mount Lykaion had of course its explanatory myth. I quote
again the garrulous but profoundly interesting Pausanias. From
Pelasgos, introducer of the acorn-diet, he slips on to Pelasgos'
son Lykaon, who gave to Zeus the surname Lykaios and founded
the Lycaean games. ' In my opinion,' he continues, ' Lycaon was
contemporary with Cecrops, king of Athens, but the two were not
equally sage in the matter of religion. For Cecrops was the first
who gave to Zeus the surname of Supreme, and he refused to
sacrifice anything that had life ; but he burned on the altar the

1 Hdt. 1. 66, Paus. 8. 1. 6, 8. 42. 6, Ail. var. hist. 3. 39, Plout. v. Coriol. 3, Artemid.
oneirocr. 2. 25 (citing Alkaios frag. 91 Bergk4 "ApKabes Zcraav (3a\avr](payoi), Philostr.
v. Apoll. 8. 7 p- 320 Kayser, Nonn. Dion. 3. 287, Galen, de alimentorum facultatibus
2. 38 (vi. 621 Kiihn), cp. de probis pravisque alimentorum sucis 4 (vi. 778 Kiihn). See
further P. Wagler Die Eiche in alter und neuer Zeit Wurzen 1891 i. 34 ff. Acorns figure
frequently on coins of Mantineia {Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Peloponnesus p. 184 f. pi. 34, 19
—22, 24—28).

2 Paus. 8. 1. 6 trans. J. G. Frazer.

3 Plout. quaestt. Rom. 92 7) ira\aibv air ' AptcaSwv to edos, ols €<ttL tis avyyeveia irpbs
T7}V 8puu; Trp&TOL yap dvdpwTrwv yeyovivai boKovcriv e/c 777s, wcrirep t/ dpvs r£ov <pvTU>v. That
this ' kinship ' with the oak was no mere metaphor appears from Lykophron's mention of
the Arcadians as eyybvwv dpvbs (Al. 480: Tzetz. ad loc. has enybvwv dpvos) and the myth
of Arkas and the oak-nymph Chrysopeleia (Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 185).