In Greek mythology, Lycaon (/laɪˈkeɪɒn/; Attic Greek: Λυκᾱ́ων, Attic Greek: [ly.kǎː.ɔːn]) was a king of Arcadia who, in the most popular version of the myth, tested Zeus' omniscience by serving him the roasted flesh of Lycaon's own son Nyctimus, in order to see whether Zeus was truly all-knowing.

In return for these gruesome deeds, Zeus transformed Lycaon into a wolf and killed his offspring; Nyctimus was restored to life.

Despite being notorious for his horrific deeds, Lycaon was also remembered as a culture hero: he was believed to have founded the city Lycosura, to have established a cult of Zeus Lycaeus and to have started the tradition of the Lycaean Games, which Pausanias thinks were older than the Panathenaic Games.[1] According to Gaius Julius Hyginus (d. AD 17), Lycaon dedicated the first temple to Hermes of Cyllene.[2]

Family

Lycaon was the son of Pelasgus[2][3] and either the Oceanid Meliboea[4] or Deianira, daughter of another Lycaon.[5] His wife was called Cyllene, an Oread nymph who gave her name to Mount Cyllenê[6] though sometimes she was regarded as his mother instead.[7][3] In some accounts, the Arcadian town Nonakris was thought to have been named after his wife.[8] Lycaon was also known to have had at least three daughters: Callisto, Dia[9] and Psophis.[10]
Sons of Lycaon

According to the Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus), Lycaon has 50 sons.[11] An alternate list of Lycaon's sons is given by Pausanias. According to his account, almost each of them founded a city in Arcadia and became its eponym.[12]

Apollodorus		Pausanias	Others	Notes
Acacus			✓		foster-father of Hermes; founded Acacesium
Acontes	1	✓
Aegaeon	2	✓
Alipherus	3	✓	✓		founded Aliphera
Ancyor	4	✓
Archebates	5	✓
Aseatas			✓		founded Asea
Bucolion	6	✓
Canethus	7	✓
Carteron	8	✓
Caucon	9	✓		✓[13]	eponym of the Caucones that were believed to have settled in Triphylia
Ceteus				✓[14]	father of Callisto or Megisto
Charisius			✓		founded Charisia
Cleitor	10	✓		✓[13]	possibly eponym of Cleitor
Coretho	11	✓
Cromus			✓		founded Cromi
Cynaethus	12	✓
Daseatas			✓		founded Dasea
Eleuther				✓[15]	stayed aside from the abomination
Euaemon	13	✓			possibly eponym of Euaemon
Eumetes	14	✓
Eumon	15	✓
Genetor	16	✓
Haemon	17	✓		✓[13]	possibly eponym of Haemoniae
Harpaleus	18	✓
Harpalycus	19	✓
Helix	20	✓
Helisson			✓		founded the town of Helisson (also gave his name to a nearby river)
Heraeus	21	✓	✓		founded Heraea
Hopleus	22	✓
Horus	23	✓
Hyperes				✓[16]	founded Hyperesia
Hypsus			✓		founded Hypsus
Lebadus				✓[15]	stayed aside from the abomination
Leo(n)	24	✓
Linus	25	✓
Lycius	26	✓	✓(possibly)	✓[13]	founded Lycoa
Macareus	27	✓	✓		founded Macaria
Macednus	28	✓			founded Macedonia
Maenalus	29	✓	✓	✓[13]	founded Maenalus
Mantineus	30	✓	✓	✓[13]	founded Mantinea
Mecisteus	31	✓
Melaeneus	32	✓	✓ (possibly)		founded Melaeneae
Nyctimus	33	✓	✓	✓[13]	succeeded to Lycaon's power
Oenotrus			✓	✓[17]	the youngest, founded Oenotria in Italy
Orchomenus	34	✓	✓	✓[13]	founded Orchomenus and Methydrium
Orestheus			✓		founded Oresthasium
Pallas	35	✓	✓		founded Pallantium
Parrhasius				✓[18]	founded Parrhasia and said to be the father of Arcas
Peraethus			✓		founded Peraetheis
Peucetius	36	✓
Phassus	37	✓
Phigalus			✓		founded Phigalia
Phineus	38	✓
Phthius	39	✓		✓[13]	possibly eponym of Phthiotis
Physius	40	✓
Plato(n)	41	✓
Polichus	42	✓
Portheus	43	✓
Prothous	44	✓
Socleus	45	✓
Stymphalus	46	✓		✓[13]	possibly eponym of the town Stymphalus
Teleboas	47	✓		✓[13]
Tegeates			✓		founded Tegea
Thesprotus	48	✓		✓[13]	founded Thesprotia
Thocnus			✓		founded Thocnia
Thyraeus			✓		founded Thyraeum
Titanas	49	✓
Trapezeus			✓		founded Trapezus
Tricolonus			✓		founded Tricoloni

Sources

There are several versions of the Lycaon myth already reported by Hesiod (Fragmenta astronomica, by Eratosthenes, Catasterismi), told by several authors. The most popular version is the one reported by Ovid in the first book of his Metamorphoses.

The different versions of the myth are as follows:[19]

According to the Bibliotheca, Lycaon had sired 50 sons with many wives. These sons were the most nefarious and carefree of all people. To test them Zeus visited them in the form of a peasant. They mixed the entrails of a child into the god's meal, whereupon the enraged Zeus threw the meal over the table, which explains the name of the city Trapezus (from τραπέζι "table"), and killed Lycaon and his sons with lightning. Only the youngest son, Nyctimus, was saved due to the intervention of Gaia.[20]
John Tzetzes records two similar versions which agree with Apollodorus' account; one mentions that the idea to serve Zeus a slaughtered child belonged to Maenalus, one of Lycaon's sons, while the other makes Nyctimus the victim.[13]
According to Pausanias, Lycaon was instantly transformed into a wolf after sacrificing a child on the altar of Zeus and sprinkling the blood on the altar.[21]
According to Lycophron, all were transformed into wolves for having devoured Nyctimus. Lycophron extends the characteristics of Lycaon and his sons onto all the Arcadians.[22]
The version recounted by Hyginus in his Fabulae[23] is basically the same as that of Pseudo-Apollodorus. In Astronomica, Hyginus describes the victim of Lycaon as being Arcas, son of Jupiter (Zeus) and Callisto, the daughter of Lycaon. When saved and restored to life, Arcas was brought up to be a hunter. By mistake, he hunted himself and his mother (for the moment transformed into a bear) into a temple where entrance was punished by death. Both were saved by Zeus to constitute the constellations Arctophylax and Ursa Major, the Great Bear.[24]
Nicolaus Damascenus tells that Lycaon's sons were nefarious. To test Zeus they mixed the flesh of a boy into the sacrifices, whereupon all who were present during the murder of the child were killed by lightning.
According to Ovid, Lycaon mistrusted and derided the signs of Zeus' divine nature which the god openly demonstrated upon arrival to Arcadia. Determined to find out whether the guest was truly a god or a mortal, Lycaon served Zeus the flesh of a prisoner, partly cooked and partly roasted. Moreover, in his quest to test Zeus' immortality Lycaon attempted to murder the god while he slept. Thereupon Zeus brought the roof down and transformed the fleeing Lycaon into a wolf.[25]
According to the dictionary Suda, Lycaon had diligently been guarding the laws established by his father for the Arcadian people. In order to keep his subjects from injustice, he would tell them that Zeus frequented his home in the guise of a mortal man so as to keep watch over how lawful the humans were. One day when he was about to perform a sacrifice, the people were eager to know if the god was present; to find out if Lycaon told them the truth about Zeus' visits, they killed one of the king's fifty sons and mixed him in with the sacrificial meat, whereupon all of them were killed by lightning.[26]
According to Eratosthenes, Lycaon butchered his grandson (that is, Arcas), who was put together again by Zeus and placed upon the constellations, whereas Lycaon's house was struck by a thunderbolt.[27]

Modern interpretation

The English poet Robert Graves, in his The Greek Myths, explained the origin of Lycaon's myth as follows:

"The story of Zeus and the boy's guts is not so much a myth as a moral anecdote expressing the disgust felt in more civilized parts of Greece for the ancient cannibalistic practices of Arcadia, which were still performed in the name of Zeus, as "barbarous and unnatural" (Plutarch: Life of Pelopidas). Lycaon's virtuous Athenian contemporary Cecrops, offered only barley—cakes, abstaining even from animal sacrifices. The Lycaonian rites, which the author denies that Zeus ever countenanced, were apparently intended to discourage the wolves from preying on flocks and herds, by sending them a human king. "Lycaeus" means "of the she-wolf", but also "of the light", and the lightning in the Lycaon myth shows that Arcadian Zeus began as a rain-making sacred king—in service to the divine She-wolf, the Moon, to whom the wolfpack howls.[28] A Great Year of one hundred months, or eight solar years, was divided equally between the sacred king and his tanist; and Lycaon's fifty sons—one for every month of the sacred king's reign—will have been the eaters of the umble soup. The figure twenty-two, unless it has been arrived at by a count of the families who claimed descent from Lycaon and had to participate in the umble-feast, probably refers to the twenty-two five-year lustra which composed a cycle—the 110-year cycle constituting the reign of a particular line of priestesses."[29]

See also

Damarchus
Lykaia
Werewolf (lycanthropy)
Tantalus

Notes

Pausanias, 8.2.1
Hyginus, Fabulae 225
Fowler, Robert L. (2013). Early Greek Mythography: Volume II Commentary. Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-19-814741-1.
Apollodorus, 3.8.1; Tzetzes on Lycophron, 481
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1.11.2 & 1.13.1; Greek Papyri III No. 140b
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1.13.1
Apollodorus, 3.8.1; Scholia ad Euripides, Orestes 1642
Pausanias, 8.17.6
Tzetzes on Lycophron, 480; Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 1.1213; Etymologicum Magnum, 288. 33 (under Dryops)
Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Psōphis
Apollodorus, 3.8.1
Pausanias, 8.3.1–5
Tzetzes on Lycophron, 481
Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1.6 with Araethus of Tegea as authority
Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 39
Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Hyperēsia
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1.11.2
The dictionary of classical mythology, Pierre Grimal, p. 346-7
Hertz, Wilhelm (1862). Der Werwolf. Beitrag zur Sagengeschichte (in German). von A. Kröner, Stuttgart.
Apollodorus, 3.8.1–2
Pausanias, 8.2.3
Lycophron, 480
Hyginus, Fabulae, 176
Theoi: Astronomica, Bear-watcher, by Gaius Julius Hyginus (translated by Mary Grant).
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1. 216 - 239
Suda s. v. Lykaōn
Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi, 8
Robert Graves. The Greek Myths, section 38: Deucalion's Flood

Robert Graves (1960). The Greek Myths. Harmondsworth, London, England: Penguin Books. pp. s.v. Deucalion's Flood. ISBN 978-0143106715.

References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lycaon.

Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities. English translation by Earnest Cary in the Loeb Classical Library, 7 volumes. Harvard University Press, 1937-1950. Online version at Bill Thayer's Web Site
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitatum Romanarum quae supersunt, Vol I-IV. . Karl Jacoby. In Aedibus B.G. Teubneri. Leipzig. 1885. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
Fowler, Robert L., Early Greek Mythography. Volume 2: Commentary. Oxford University Press. Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom. 2013. ISBN 978-0-19-814741-1
Gaius Julius Hyginus, Astronomica from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths, Harmondsworth, London, England, Penguin Books, 1960. ISBN 978-0143106715
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Moralia with an English Translation by Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
Lycophron, The Alexandra translated by Alexander William Mair. Loeb Classical Library Volume 129. London: William Heinemann, 1921. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Lycophron, Alexandra translated by A.W. Mair. London: William Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1921. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses translated by Brookes More (1859-1942). Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses. Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
Stephanus of Byzantium, Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt, edited by August Meineike (1790-1870), published 1849. A few entries from this important ancient handbook of place names have been translated by Brady Kiesling. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Suida, Suda Encyclopedia translated by Ross Scaife, David Whitehead, William Hutton, Catharine Roth, Jennifer Benedict, Gregory Hays, Malcolm Heath Sean M. Redmond, Nicholas Fincher, Patrick Rourke, Elizabeth Vandiver, Raphael Finkel, Frederick Williams, Carl Widstrand, Robert Dyer, Joseph L. Rife, Oliver Phillips and many others. Online version at the Topos Text Project.

Greek Mythology

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