Lycaon- Greek FigureMortal"King of Arcadia"

The Banquet

Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, ruled Arcadia from the mountains of the Peloponnese. When Zeus came to his court disguised as a mortal, Lycaon set a test: he killed a man and served the flesh to the god. In Ovid's telling, the victim was a Molossian hostage, partly boiled and partly roasted. Apollodorus says Lycaon's sons mixed a child's entrails into the offering.

Zeus recognized the meat. He overturned the table and struck the house with a thunderbolt. Ovid follows the king into the fields as he flees: his clothes turn to shaggy fur and his cries for help come out as howls. But the grey hair and the fierce expression remain. The wolf still looked like Lycaon.

Apollodorus adds that Zeus destroyed Lycaon's fifty sons with thunderbolts, sparing only the youngest, Nyctimus, through Gaia's intervention.

The Flood

Zeus carried the story to Olympus. In Ovid's telling, he stood before the assembled gods and described what Lycaon had set before him. He decided to drown the world. Only Deucalion and Pyrrha survived, floating in a chest until the waters receded. Arcadian tradition placed the flood in the reign of Nyctimus, Lycaon's successor.

The Wolves of Mount Lykaion

Pausanias records that Lycaon founded the cult of Zeus Lykaios on Mount Lykaion, the highest peak in Arcadia, and instituted the Lykaia games. The altar on the summit carried a rule: whoever tasted human flesh at the sacrifice became a wolf for nine years. Only by abstaining from human flesh for the full term could they regain their shape. Pausanias names Damarchus of Parrhasia, who changed into a wolf at the Lykaion sacrifice and returned to human form nine years later. He went on to win at the Olympic games as a boxer.