The Monstrefact: The Werewolf, Part 3 - Lycaon

The former were wolf emerges in the early second millennium CE, while the latter lacanthropy, has an older but complex history as a second century CE catch all for various mental illnesses, which came to be conflated with the Greek myth of Lacaan Licaan was the legendary king of Arcadia who dare to try and trick the high god Zeus into eating human flesh. His ploy was unsuccessful, however, and Zeus inflicted a fitting divine punishment for one so savage, which Avid

describes as following in the Metamorphosis Henry Thomas Riley translation. Alarmed, he himself takes to flight, and, having reached the solitude of the country. He howls aloud and in vain attempts to speak. His mouth gathers rage from himself, and through its usual desire for slaughter, it is directed against the sheep, and even still delights in blood. His garments are changed into hair, his arms into legs. He becomes a wolf,

and he still retains vestiges of his ancient form. His hoariness is still the same, The same violence appears in his features. His eyes are bright as before. He is still the same image of ferocity, and just to be sure, all responsible parties are punished, Zeus follows us up with the Great flood. But Laikayan himself is indeed transformed into a wolf, and, like the biblical Caine, as Riley points out in his notes, he is forced to live as a cast off outsider, a lone wolf. In some tellings,

his sons are transformed as well. While the myth of Likaan is sometimes held up as an ancient key to understanding subsequent werewolf tales, Daniel Ogden in twenty twenty one's were Wolves in the Ancient World maintains that the tale is a quote metaphorical derivative of the ancient folkloric traditions that are indeed the key. He devotes an entire later chapter in the book to Laichan and the complex interplay

there of three key categories. One historic evidence for a lupine transformation right of passage for young men of the Antet clan. Two various related myths of lupine transformation and sacrilegious acts of human sacrifice in cannab and three a supposedly historical tale of an individual changing into a wolf after eating part of a human sacrifice at the Likekaea festival on the slopes of Mount ly Chaan aka Wolf Mountain.

I won't attempt to summarize the entirety of his analysis, but Ogden does contend that the story is more werewolf

adjacent than anything. Lykaan is a man punished with transformation into a wolf, a transformation that occurs only once outside of his control, making him no more a true were wolf than Aracting, another victim of divine transformation punishment in Greek myth is a were spider, so an unsatisfying were wolf and by no means the key trendsetter that some make him out to be, but still an important and

influential myth in the Grand Tradition of werewolves. As discussed in the last episode, he's not key to the understanding of the word lacanthropy, but his myth eventually becomes conflated

with the term to some degree. Now. One of the tales interwoven in the Arcadian myth is that of the Olympic athlete DeMarcus, a boxer who is said to have been transformed into a wolf for a period of nine to ten years at the Festival of Lykaa, possibly due to ritual consumption of human flesh, thus, as is common in all Ichaean myths, blurring the line between man and beast. But Ogden stresses that the quote unquote werewolf ism of DeMarcus, if we may call it, that, is more directly related

to his status as a superb athlete. In keeping with various other supernatural stories of the time about athletes, including other accounts of lupine transformation, this would seem a tale as old as time. Multiple contemporary mma fighters, for example, and professional sports stars have been nicknamed werewolf. The Batman villain known as Werewolf was also an Olympic athlete, and let us not forget teen Wolf cousins Scott and Todd

Howe Howard, known for their lycanthropic basketball abilities. This brings us back to a continuing point of contemplation in werewolf traditions, there is a certain bit of the beast that we admire and crave to manifest in our strength and speed, or even in our savagery. We'll have more to explore concerning ancient loacanthropy in the next episode, including the best cases for the earliest written and visual depictions of werewolves. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Factor, The

Artifact or Animalist Dependium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.