For the Trojan Lycaon, see Lycaon (son of Priamos).
Lycaon was the cruel king of Arcadia, son of Pelasgus and Meliboea, who tested Zeus by serving him a dish of a slaughtered and dismembered child. In return for this gruesome deed Zeus transformed Lycaon into the form of a wolf, and killed Lycaon's fifty sons by lightning bolts, except possibly Nyctimus, who was then the slaughered child, and instead became restored to life[1].
In Astronomica Hyginus describes the victim of Lycaon as being Arcas, son of Jupiter (Zeus) and Callisto, the daughter of Lycaon. When saved and restored to life, Arcas was brought up to be a hunter by mistake hunting himself and his mother (for the moment transmogrified to a bear) into a temple where the entrance was punished by death, both saved by Zeus to constitute the constellations Arctophylax and Greater Bear[2].
According to the Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus), (3.8.1)[3], the 50 sons of Lycaon were:
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Maenalus was in early modern times being represented by the now obsolete constellations Mons Maenalus in the southern part of Boötes.
Perhaps the fiftieth son of Lycaon is Acacus, founder of Acacesium, as given by Pausanias.[4]
Notes
- ^ Theoi: Lykaon
- ^ Theoi: Astronomica, Bear-watcher, by Gaius Julius Hyginus translated by Mary Grant
- ^ Perseus Digital Library: Apollodorus, Library and Epitome part VIII
- ^ Pausanias Description of Greece 8.3.2, from Project Perseus
See also
External links
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