Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/191

Rh to Hera in Samos, according to Mandrobulus, and images of the animals would congregate in his temple. The amours of Zeus, then, are probably traceable to the common habit of tracing noble descents to a god, and in the genealogical narrative older totemistic and other local myths found a place. Apart from his intrigues, the youth of Zeus was like that of some masquerading and wandering king, such as James V. in Scotland. Though Plato, in the Republic, is unwilling that the young should be taught how the gods go about disguised as strangers, this was their conduct in the myths. Thus we read of—

"Lycaon and his fifty sons, whom Zeus In their own house spied on, and unawares Watching at hand, from his disguise arose, And overset the table where they sat Around their impious feast, and slew them all."

Clemens of Alexandria contrasts the "human festival" of Zeus among the Ethiopians with the inhuman banquet offered to him by Lycaon in Arcadia. The permanence of Arcadian human sacrifice has already been alluded to, and it is confirmed by the superstition that whoever tasted the human portion in the mess sacrificed to Zeus became a were-wolf, resuming his original shape if for ten years he abstained from the flesh of men.