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

80 Human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios

sacrifice his son, or grandson, or the son of one of his subjects, or
even, by a further relaxation, a stranger from afar in lieu of his
own life. He thus discharged his original debt; but only to incur
another of equal magnitude. For by slaying his son or grandson
or subject he would render himself liable to the early law of
bloodshed1. If a man slew a member of an alien tribe or city,
he must either be slain himself in return or else pay a sufficient
blood-price. But if he slew a member of his own tribe or city,
no blood-price was allowed: he must be put to death, or—it was
the only possible alternative—flee into perpetual exile. The king,
therefore, taken in this dilemma, sought to escape by the expedient
of the common feast, which enabled him to share his guilt with
others. The feasters in turn transferred it to a single member of
the ' Flower'-clan. And he had forthwith to pay the penalty
otherwise incumbent on the king; he had, that is, either to die
the death or to flee the country.

It would seem, then, that the myth of Lykaon has in effect
preserved the first stages of a custom whose final form is given
in the statements of Skopas and Euanthes. Not often does an
aetiological myth supply so satisfactory an aition. Viewing the
story as a whole, we cannot but feel that the connexion of Zeus
Lykaios with the light sky is a more fundamental feature of it
than the transformation of his worshippers into wolves. He as
god of the light sky normally bestowed the sunshine and ripened
the crops. They on certain rare and exceptional occasions incurred
bloodguiltiness in his service and had to disappear. They might
be killed, or they might be exiled. Some of our authorities declare
that Zeus struck them with lightning—an appropriate end for
worshippers of a sky-god2. Others state that they became were-
wolves—again an appropriate fate for exiles and vagabonds3.
This belief in were-wolves, which has from time immemorial
prevailed throughout Europe4 and is even now to be traced in

1 H. E. Seebohm On the Structure of Greek Tribal Society London 1895 p. 41 ff.
('The Liability for Bloodshed'). Moreover, 'the sanctity of the stranger-guest, who as
early as Homer and probably much earlier was placed under the protection of Zeus, was
almost as great as the sanctity of the kinsman's life, and to slay him was a religious sin,
for which, according to one legend, Heracles was sold into slavery to Omphale' (Farnell
Cults of Gk. States i. 73 with note d).

2 Folk-Lore 1904 xv. 385 f., 1905 xvi. 324 f.

3 See the facts collected by Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 918 n. 7.

Note also that, according to Macrizi De valle Hadhramaut Bonn 1866 p. 19 f. (quoted
by W. Robertson Smith Lectures on the Religion oj the Semites'1 London 1907 p. 88,
R. Campbell Thompson Semitic Magic London 1908 p. 57 n. 1), the Sei'ar in Hadramaut
can change to were-wolves in time of drought.

4 Recent monographs on the subject are S. Baring-Gould The Book of Were- Wolves