Lykaia
In Ancient Greece, the Lykaia (Greek: Λυκαία) was an archaic festival with a secret ritual on the slopes of Mount Lykaion ("Wolf Mountain"), the tallest peak in Arcadia.The rituals and myths of this primitive rite of passage centered upon an ancient threat of cannibalism and the possibility of a werewolf transformation for the epheboi (adolescent males) who were the participants.The ritual was nocturnal, to judge from the name of Nyctimus (nyx, "night") that was given to the son of Lycaeus who was killed and served up as part of the feast to Zeus.[9] The traveller Pausanias told of an Olympic boxing champion Damarchus of Parrhasia, who had "turned into a wolf at the sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, and changed back into a man again in the ninth year thereafter",[10] from which Walter Burkert affirms that, for Damarchus to have successfully participated at least nine years later, the participants in the ritual feast must have been ephebes.Modern archaeologists have found no trace of human remains among the sacrificial detritus,[16] but recent discoveries at the mountain-top ash-heap altar that Pausanias saw but was reluctant to pry into, reveal that it was much older than the Classical Greeks themselves realised.[20] In 1973, the Ano Karyes(ΑΝΩ ΚΑΡΥΕΣ) Association "O Lykaios Dias(Ο Λύκαιος Δίας)" established the modern Lykaia, which are held every four years on the same place as the ancient games.The first Estiada walks slowly towards the southern pillar base (where two golden eagles were placed in ancient times) and lights the torch.
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