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Lycaeus (Mons Lycaeus, mod. Diaphorti) is a mountain in Arcadia, sacred to Zeus. Lycaeus, who was said to have been born and brought
up on it, and the home of Pelasgus and his son Lycaon, who is said to have founded the ritual of Zeus practised on its
summit. This seems to have involved a human sacrifice, and a feast in
which the man who received the portion of a human victim was changed to a wolf, as Lycaon
had been after sacrificing a child. The altar of Zeus consists of a great mound of ashes with a retaining wall. It was said that
no shadows fell within the precincts ; and that any who entered it died within the year.
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