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.
The oldest city, the oldest cult (that of ZeusLycaeus), and the first civilization of Arcadia are attributed to Lycaon.
Usener and others identify Lycaon with ZeusLycaeus, the god of light, who slays his son Nyctimus (the dark) or is succeeded by him, in allusion to the perpetual succession of night and day.
Meyer, the belief that ZeusLycaeus accepted human sacrifice in the form of a wolf was the origin of the myth that Lycaon, the founder of his cult, became a wolf, i.e.
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