Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/213

Rh CHAP. would have known that Zeus had his Olympian and Lykaian hills, his Crete, his Dikte, his Arkadia, his Phoinikian home wherever the sun sent forth his long train of light ^ across the sky. But in the minds of Achaians and Hellenes the old phrase had associated with the abode of Zeus the idea of an ineffable splendour ; and the tena- city with which they clung to this idea is singularly exhibited in the strange superstition which made the Lykaian sanctuary an object of wondering dread. As the Hebrew of old said that none might look on the face of God and live, so the Aryan held that the doom of death was on the man who dared to look on the unveiled splendour of Zeus. The Arkadian localised this faith in his Lykaian Temenos, and averred not only that all living things which might enter it would die within the year, but that not a single object within it ever cast a shadow. The idea, being once suggested, ran out into the wildest fancies, and the huntsman, who drew back at the inclosure when a hunted beast entered it, failed not to see that its body no longer cast a shadow after it had entered the charmed circle. The science of the geographer does but heighten his faith in the local tradition. When the sun is in the sign of the Crab, he knows that at the Ethiopian Syene there are no shadows at midday ; but the marvel was that in this Arkadian sanctuary there was never any shadow the whole year round. Pausanias admitted the fact as readily as the Royal Society set to work, it is said, to explain why a vessel of water with a fish in it was no heavier than it would have been without the fish : but he could not know that in the real Lykosoura there could be no shade, although this Lykosoura was not to be sought in Peloponnesos or in any land of human habitation. In the bright heaven, through which travels the unclouded sun, there can be no darkness at all.^

But the word which supplied the name of the shadowless Lykaian Lykosoura sanctuary was confused in their mind with the name of the wolf, so ^^^^ ^' called for the same reason which led the German to speak of the bear as Goldfuss ; and at once it became necessary to show how the idea of wolves was linked with the fortunes of Lykaon. This son of Pelasgos was the builder of Lykosoura, and he called Zeus Lykaios,' after his own name, instituting in his honour the Lykaian festival which answered to the Dawn festival in the city of the Athenians. But his wisdom, as Pausanias testifies, was not equal to that of his contemporary Kekrops, who felt that no living thing should be offered

' AvK6(Tovpa. Emile Buonouf, La of the golden race, he was simply saying Legende Athenieune, Ii6. that it was built, as it must necessarily the Olympian temple was built by men ^ Paus. viii. 2, I.
 * When Pausanias, v. 7, 4, says that be, by Lykians or men of light,