Lycaon Tests Zeus and His House Falls

Canonical narrative

Pseudo-Apollodorus places Zeus inside an Arcadian house under concealment. Lycaon has many sons, and their conduct becomes a test of whether the visitor is divine. A child is killed, mixed into the sacrifice, and set before Zeus. The meal attempts to force proof of godhood through an act of human violence.

Zeus overturns the table and strikes the house with a thunderbolt. Nyctimus survives and succeeds to power. The account then moves toward the flood in his reign, joining household sacrilege to destruction on a wider scale. The exact agent and victim details vary across the transmitted Lycaon traditions, so this Library sequence must stand as one telling among several.

This is not evidence for a hidden ritual recipe. It is a mythographic accusation about violation, divine testing, and catastrophic punishment. Pausanias's fearful Mount Lykaion reports remain separate cult geography and are not made to prove the meal as historical practice.

The overturned table and thunderbolt expose a household that tried to test divinity through murder, while Nyctimus carries the damaged Arcadian line beyond the ruin.

Episodes in this myth

Participants and roles

Source-scoped variants

Source witnesses