Lycaeus
Lycaeus (Mons Lycaeus, mod.
Diaphorti) is a mountain in
Arcadia, sacred to
Zeus Lycaeus, who was said to have been born and brought up on it, and the home
of
Pelasgus and his son
Lycaon, who is said to have founded the ritual of
Zeus
practised on its summit. This seems to have involved a
human sacrifice, and a
feast in which the man who received the portion of a human victim was changed to
a
wolf, as Lycaon had been after sacrificing a child. The altar of Zeus consists
of a great mound of ashes with a retaining wall. It was said that no shadows
fell within the precincts ; and that any who entered it died within the year.
initial entry from a 1911 encyclopedia