Lykaon (Arcadians)
Lykaon ( Greek Λυκάων ) is king of the Arcadians and son of Pelasgos in Greek mythology . He founded the city of Lykosura , the oldest in the country. He also founded the cult of Lycaean Zeus on Mount Lykaion , where human sacrifices were made in historical times after Plato , and the Lycean fighting games, the most prestigious in Arcadia.
myth
Sons of Lykaon
Lycaon was the father of a numerous line of sons (all personifications of Arcadian cities) who exceeded all men in iniquity and were therefore destroyed by Zeus , except for one ( Nyktimos ). The Deucalionic flood , which Zeus sent to destroy the degenerate human race, was ascribed to their godlessness .
The ancient sources tend to judge the figure of the Lykaon negatively. His services as a city founder and cult donor in Arcadia are particularly emphasized by Pausanias . The following list represents the versions of Apollodorus and Pausanias.
Versions of the myth
There are several versions of the Lycaon myth, reported very early by Hesiod ( Fragmenta astronomica , in Eratosthenes , Katasterismi ), of which the description in the First Book of Metamorphoses by Ovid is the most famous.
The different versions of the myth are as follows:
- According to Pausanias , Lykaon was instantly transformed into a wolf after sacrificing a child on the altar of the god Zeus and sprinkling the altar with his blood.
- According to the library of Apollodorus , Lykaon and many women had fathered 50 sons who exceeded all men in arrogance and nefariness. To test them, Zeus came to them in the form of a poor day laborer. They mixed the entrails of a child into his food, whereupon Zeus in anger knocked over the table with the served meal, which explains the name of the city Trapezous , and killed Lykaon and his sons with a lightning bolt. Only the youngest he spared on the intervention of the earth goddess Ge .
- After Lycophron , everyone was turned into wolves.
- After Hyginus , Jupiter came to Lykaon for the sake of his daughter Callisto . In this version only Lykaon is turned into a wolf and his sons are killed with lightning.
- With Nikolaos of Damascus only Lycaon's sons are nefarious. To test Zeus, they mixed the flesh of a boy with the victim, whereupon everyone who was present at the child's murder was struck by lightning.
- According to Ovid, it is only Lykaon who puts the meat of a prisoner, partly boiled and partly roasted, in front of Zeus. Zeus then collapses the roof and transforms the fleeing Lykaon into a wolf.
- According to Eratosthenes, Lykaon slaughtered his grandson, whom Zeus reassembled and made into a constellation.
Trivia
Lycaon is a character in Christoph Ransmayr's The Last World , published in 1988.
literature
- Paul Weizsäcker : Lykaon 3 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 2169-2173 ( digital copy ).
- Johanna Schmidt : Lykaon 3. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIII, 2, Stuttgart 1927, Col. 2248-2252.
- Edzard Visser : Lykaon. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 , column 554 f.
Web links
- Lykaon in the Theoi Project (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pausanias 8,2,1
- ↑ Plato, Politeia 565d
- ↑ Libraries of Apollodor 3, 8, 1–3
- ↑ The list follows: Paul Weizsäcker: Lykaon 3 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 2169 f. ( Digitized version ).
- ^ Wilhelm Hertz : The werewolf. Contribution to the saga. Kröner, Stuttgart 1862 (out of date).
- ↑ Pausanias 8,2,3
- ↑ Libraries of Apollodor 3, 8, 1-6
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 176
- ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 1, 211-239