[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).
[410] Apollodôr. iii. 8, 1. Hygin. fab. 176. Eratosthen. Catasterism. 8. Pausan. viii. 2, 2-3. A different story respecting the immolation of the child is in Nikolaus Damask. Frag. p. 41, Orelli. Lykaôn is mentioned as the first founder of the temple of Zeus Lykæus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662; but nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its consequences. In the historical times, the festival and solemnities of the Lykæa do not seem to have been distinguished materially from the other agônes of Greece (Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 104; Nem. x. 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals in the army of Cyrus the younger, celebrated the solemnity with great magnificence in the march through Asia Minor (Xen. Anab. i. 2, 10). But the fable of the human sacrifice, and the subsequent transmutation of the person who had eaten human food into a wolf, continued to be told in connection with them (Plato, de Republic. viii. c. 15. p. 417). Compare Pliny, H. N. viii. 34. This passage of Plato seems to afford distinct indication that the practice of offering human victims at the altar of the Lykæan Zeus was neither prevalent nor recent, but at most only traditional and antiquated; and it therefore limits the sense or invalidates the authority of the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos, c. 5.
[411] Paus. viii. 3. Hygin. fab. 177.
[412] Apollod. iii. 8, 2.
[413] Pausan. viii. 3, 2. Apollod. iii. 8, 2. Hesiod. apud Eratosthen. Catasterism. 1. Fragm. 182, Marktsch. Hygin. f. 177.
[414] Homer, Iliad, ii. 604. Pind. Olymp. vi. 44-63.
The tomb of Æpytus, mentioned in the Iliad, was shown to Pausanias between Pheneus and Stymphalus (Pausan. viii. 16, 2). Æpytus was a cognomen of Hermês (Pausan. viii. 47, 3).
The hero Arkas was worshipped at Mantineia, under the special injunction of the Delphian oracle (Pausan. viii. 9, 2).