Lykosoura. In other cases it is the balance between two associated deities that is
unusual: the precedence of the daughter (Despoina or Kore) over Demeter, still
perceptible in the Roman era, is a typical example of this (Jost 1996b:199).
Arcadian Myths
Some distinctively Arcadian features can thus be detected in the deities and their cults,
but did Arcadia also have, in parallel, a distinctive ‘‘religious imagination?’’
One strand of Arcadian mythology derives from what might be termed the ‘‘com-
mon store of Greek mythology’’: these are the myths of divine births (Poseidon,
Zeus, Hermes), agrarian myths (when Athena or Demeter deprives the earth of its
fruits in her wrath), and stories of raped princesses (Auge, Phialo) or heroic exploits
such as those of Heracles. Other myths are more specifically Arcadian in character,
namely those which include theriomorphism: the punishment of Lykaon with trans-
formation into a wolf, or the transformation of Poseidon and Demeter into horses.
The tales of divine births stake the claim that Arcadia played a major role in the
biographies of the gods. The Arcadians adapted a ‘‘panhellenic’’ myth in order to
acclimatize Poseidon to their country. Near the spring of Arne, close to Mantinea,
Rhea had told Kronos that she had given birth to a horse and had given him a foal to
eat instead of his child, ‘‘as she next gave him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes
instead of Zeus’’ (Pausanias 8.8.2). The legend is modeled on the panhellenic legend
of the birth of Zeus, but the foal evokes Poseidon’s affinities with the horse.
The birth of Zeus became the subject of official tradition amongst the Arcadians.
Zeus was reared, they said, on Mount Lykaion; there was on Lykaion a place called
Kre ̄tea. According to them it was this place, and not the island of Crete, that
witnessed the childhood of the god. ‘‘To the nymphs by whom, as they say, Zeus
was reared, they give the names Thiso, Neda and Hagno’’ (Pausanias 8.38.2–3). This
legend, which sought to make Arcadia the homeland of Zeus, asserts at once both the
country’s antiquity and its particularly sacred character. Callimachus proposed, in his
Hymn to Zeus(Hymn1, lines 10–54) a sort of compromise between Crete and
Arcadia: the birth of Zeus was located in Parrhasia, on Mount Lykaion, in a ‘‘place
now sacred,’’ whereas hiskourotrophia, his rearing, took place in Crete. The prece-
dence is thus given to Arcadia, which is the place in which Zeus came into the world.
The existence of the toponym Kre ̄tea justified Arcadian claims.
The Arcadians had to compromise with another of their local traditions to establish
this official version centered on Mount Lykaion, namely that of Zeus’ birth at
Methydrion. ‘‘The Methydrion tradition,’’ writes Pausanias (8.36.2–3), ‘‘holds that
Rhea, pregnant with Zeus, arrived on Mount Thaumasion and secured an offer of
help from Hoplodamos and all the other giants who accompanied him, in case
Kronos should come to attack her. The people of Methydrion admit that she gave
birth somewhere on Lykaion, but it is in their own territory that they locate the
deception of Kronos and the substitution of the child with a stone, in accordance with
the myth of the Greeks.’’ Clearly, the people of Methydrion initially located the
entire myth in their own land, since it is hardly logical that Rhea should tarry on
Mount Thaumasion prior to the birth of Zeus, then give birth without protection
on Mount Lykaion, and then give the deceitful stone to her husband on Mount
The Religious System in Arcadia 273