Lycaeus

Sometimes also Lyceus, a surname of certain divinities worshiped on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, as for instance Zeus, who had a sanctuary on it, in which the festival of the Lycaea was celebrated. No one was allowed to enter the temple, and if any one forced his way in, he was believed to stay within for one year, and to lose his shadow.1

According to others those who entered it were stoned to death by the Arcadians, or were called stags, and obliged to take to flight to save their lives.2 Pan also was called the Lycaean, because he was born and had a sanctuary on Mount Lycaeon.3 Lycaeus also occurs as a surname of Apollo. See Lycius.

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References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 2.1, 38.4 ff.; Pindar. Olympian Odes xiii, 154.
  2. Plutarch. Greek Questions, 39.
  3. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 38.4; Strabo. Geography viii, p. 388; Servius on Virgil's Georgics i, 16; Virgil. Aeneid viii, 344.

Source

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.