performed in which the whole world participates’’ (cf. also Ps.-Plato,Minos315c).
Pausanias (8.38.7) is laconic about the sacrifices on Mount Lykaion: the secrecy that
surrounded the ceremony in his time would have prevented him from inquiring into
the subject of them and he uses a kind of apotropaic formula (‘‘let them be what they
always have been’’) before passing on to another topic. The embarrassment he
exhibits indicates that he has some idea about the sacrifices in question and about
their unusual and shocking nature (he expresses his repugnance for human sacrifices
at 1.22.6, on the subject of Polyxena). If we leave aside the werewolf stories,
described asmuthoiby Plato, that surrounded the sacrifices on Lykaion, we may
inquire into the reality of these human sacrifices, which the ancient sources group
amongst barbarian sacrifices, together with those of the Carthaginians.
The reality of these sacrifices had long been agreed upon, despite the negative
results of the excavations of K. Kourouniotis (Jost 2002c). But that view is now
undergoing revision. There is a general tendency to deny the historicity of almost all
human sacrifices mentioned in the texts. The claims of human sacrifice on Mount
Lykaion could derive from a confusion between the myth of Lykaon, sacrificer of a
child, and the rite itself (Hughes 1991:105–6), or they could even (and this is the
most widespread interpretation) reflect a symbolic death in initiation rites for adoles-
cents; the power of suggestion could have supported rumors of a rite of cannibalism
(Bonnechere 1994:85–96). In fact, the archaeological argument is not decisive. The
outdatedness of the excavation means that new investigations are required. Moreover,
the notion of human sacrifice is not wholly divorced from that of the funeral (it can be
seen in the case of Polyxena at Euripides,Hecuba605–14), and the remains of the
human victims could have been the object of separate treatment, away from the altar.
The ‘‘symbolic’’ interpretation of the rite is not impossible in itself, but its initiatory
character is far from assured. Everything rests on a tendentious interpretation of texts
describing someone who has consumed human flesh being transformed into a wolf.
The traces of a tribal initiation are sought, but the reality of any such initiation
remains to be proven (Jost, forthcoming (b)). To turn the human sacrifices into ‘‘a
symbol, an image, a mythical exaggeration’’ (as does Bonnechere 1994:314)
amounts, in the case of Mount Lykaion, to a denial of the testimonies of Theophras-
tus and theMinosthat remain fundamental. But the reality of human sacrifices is too
emphatic in these texts to be swept asidea priori. It is better to leave the question
open. The persistence of the tradition and (why not?) the fact of human sacrifices in
any case would suit the wild character of Lykaion’s landscape well.
Whatever interpretation is to be retained, the idea that Zeus demanded human
sacrifices is not incompatible with the image of an Arcadian federal god. Zeus was a
wild god (abaton, sacrifice), a god of countrymen to whom the weather matters, but
also a god of national unity, who brought the Arcadians together at the time of
panhellenic games.
A third original Arcadian deity, Despoina, the ‘‘Mistress,’’ certainly had a pan-
Arcadian audience. ‘‘There is no deity that the Arcadians venerate more than
this Despoina’’ writes Pausanias (8.37.9). Since we know that the cult at Lykosoura
was the only one she received in Arcadia, we must infer that this city’s sanctuary was
honored by all the Arcadians. When they refused to move to populate Megalopolis,
the inhabitants of Lykosoura were forgiven for this by the Arcadians, not only
because of the sanctuary’s right of asylum, but also because the cult it housed
The Religious System in Arcadia 267