Case file · Folklore / legend
The werewolf rite of Mount Lykaion
Ancient writers said that whoever tasted human flesh at the secret sacrifice to Zeus on Mount Lykaion in Arcadia turned into a wolf, the root of the Lycaon myth.
400 BCE · 37.46, 22.00 · status: legend
The account
Pausanias claims that the boxer Damarchus, an Olympic victor of around 400 BC, spent nine years as a wolf after such a sacrifice and became a man again by abstaining from human flesh. He also says no shadows fell in the sacred precinct and that anyone who entered it died within a year. The ash altar on the summit was in use from the Mycenaean period on.
The sceptical view
Pausanias himself reported the werewolf stories with reserve, and no archaeological proof of human sacrifice on the summit has been established.