[408] Iliad, ix. 553. Simonidês had handled this story in detail (Schol. Ven. II. ix. p. 553). Bacchylidês (ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. iv. 92) celebrated in one of his poems the competition among many eager suitors for the hand of Marpêssa, under circumstances similar to the competition for Hippodameia, daughter of Œnomaus. Many unsuccessful suitors perished by the hand of Euênus: their skulls were affixed to the wall of the temple of Poseidôn.
[409] Apollod. i. 7, 9. Pausan. iv. 2, 5. Apollônius Rhodius describes Idas as full of boast and self-confidence, heedless of the necessity of divine aid. Probably this was the character of the brothers in the old legend, as the enemies of the Dioskuri.
The wrath of the Dioskuri against Messênia was treated, even in the historical times, as the grand cause of the subjection of the Messênians by the Spartans: that wrath had been appeased at the time when Epameinondas reconstituted Messênê (Pausan. iv. 27, 1).
Aphareus, after the death of his sons, founded the town of Arênê, and made over most part of his dominions to his kinsman Nêleus, with whom we pass into the Pylian genealogy.
The Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother of Argos and son of Zeus by Niobê, daughter of Phorôneus: this logographer wished to establish a community of origin between the Argeians and the Arcadians.
Lykaôn son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different wives, fifty sons, the most savage, impious and wicked of mankind: Mænalus was the eldest of them. Zeus, in order that he might himself become a witness of their misdeeds, presented himself to them in disguise. They killed a child and served it up to him for a meal; but the god overturned the table and struck dead with thunder Lykaôn and all his fifty sons, with the single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom he spared at the earnest intercession of the goddess Gæa (the Earth). The town near which the table was overturned received the name of Trapezus (Tabletown).
This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type as that of the ants in Ægina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, and may probably belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pausanias tells us a story in many respects different, which was represented to him in Arcadia as the primitive local account, and which becomes the more interesting, as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go to illustrate the same point—the ferocity of Lykaôn’s character, as well as the cruel rites which he practised. The latter was the first who established the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykæus: he offered up a child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar. Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a wolf.[410]