Lykaia

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In Ancient Greece, the Lykaia (in Greek: λυκαια) was an archaic festival with a secret ritual on the slopes of Mount Lykaion ("Wolf Mountain"), the tallest peak in rustic Arcadia. The rituals and myths of this primitive rite of passage centered upon an ancient threat of cannibalism and the possibility of a werewolf transformation for the epheboi (adolescent males) who were the participants. The festival occurred yearly, probably at the beginning of May.

The epithet Lykaios ("wolf-Zeus") is assumed by Zeus only in connection with the Lykaia, which was the main Arcadian festival. Zeus had only a formal connection as patron of the ritual. In the founding myth, of Lycaon's banquet for the gods that included the flesh of a human sacrifice, perhaps one of his sons, Nyctimus or his grandson, Arcas, Zeus overturned the table and struck the house of Lyceus with a thunderbolt; his patronage at the Lykaia can have been little more than a formula.

The ritual was nocturnal, to judge from the name of Nyctimus (nyx, "night"). Rumors of the ceremony that circulated among other Greeks revolved around the theme of human sacrifice and cannibalism: according to Plato (Republic 565d-e), a particular clan would gather on the mountain to make a sacrifice every nine years to Zeus Lykaios, and a single morsel of human entrails would be intermingled with the animal's. Whoever ate the human flesh was said to turn into a wolf, and could only regain human form if he did not eat again of human flesh until the next nine-year cycle had ended. Pausanias told of the Olympic boxing champion Damarchus of Parrhasia, who had "turned into a wolf at the sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, and changed back into a man again in the tenth year thereafter" (6.8.2), from which Burkert affirms that, for Damarchos to have successfully participated at least ten years later, the participants in the ritual feast must have been ephebes.

A sanctuary of Pan was also located upon the mountain. According to tradition, Euandros, son of Hermes, led a colony from Pallantion in Arkadia into Italy, where he built a town Pallantion on the Palatine, and introduced the cult of Pan Lýkaios and the festival of the Lykaia, which later became the major Roman festival of Lupercalia.

Porphyry reported that Theophrastus had compared the sacrifice "at the Lykaia in Arcadia" with Carthaginian sacrifices to Moloch.

There were several sites. At the summit on Mount Lykaion Pausanias saw the ash-pile altar to Zeus but, as attending the rite was impossible, he was obliged to "let it be as it is and as it was from the beginning" ((8.38.7).

Near the ancient ash-heap where the sacrifices took place was a forbidden precinct in which, allegedly, no shadows were ever cast. Anyone who entered would have to be sacrificed. There was the cave of Rhea, the Kretaia, where, according to local legend, Zeus was born and was cared for by the nymphs. There were games associated with the satisfactory completion of the Lykaia, which removed in the fourth century to Megalopolis; when it was founded in 371 BCE, Megalopolis was the first urbanization in rustic Arcadia; there the major temple was dedicated to Zeus Lykaios, though the Arcadians continued to sacrifice on the mountain-top to Pausanias' day (second century CE).

Apollo, too had an archaic wolf-form, Apollo Lycaeus, worshipped in Athens at the Lykeion, or Lyceum, which was made memorable as the site where Aristotle walked and taught.

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Last updated on Friday November 23, 2007 at 15:29:11 PST (GMT -0800)
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