This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type as that of the ants in Ægina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, and may probably belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pausanias tells us a story in many respects different, which was represented to him in Arcadia as the primitive local account, and which becomes the more interesting, as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go to illustrate the same point—the ferocity of Lykaôn’s character, as well as the cruel rites which he practised. The latter was the first who established the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykæus: he offered up a child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar. Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a wolf.[410] [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.