Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Arkadians: Plato, Varro, and others on supposed Lykaian human sacrifice (fourth century BCE on),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified August 4, 2026, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=23064.

Ancient authors: Plato (fourth century BCE), Republic 565; Theophrastos of Eresos on Lesbos (fourth century BCE), On Piety, as cited by Porphyry of Tyre (third century CE, De abstinentia / On Abstinence from Killing Animals 2.5.27 (link; link to Greek); Platonic author (fourth century BCE), Minos 313-318; Marcus Terrentius Varro (first century BCE), Human and Divine Antiquities, as cited by Augustine, City of God 18.17 (link; link to Latin).

Comments: The evaluation of Arkadians (or: Arcadians) of the central Peloponnesos by other Greek peoples and in some cases by Romans (e.g. Varro via Augustine) was mixed. But one element in that mixture was the suggestion that Arkadians were less than civilized. Polybios (himself from Megalopolis in Arkadia) suggests that the rough mountainous terrain and difficult physical conditions of Arkadia were conducive to a rough and primitive people, but that Arkadians found ways of overcoming this to become a virtuous people, primarily through music (link). Somewhat innocuous, too, is when outsiders label Arkadians “acorn-eaters” and, therefore, as a people with a primitive diet, as in one supposed oracle of Apollo from Delphi that gets repeated (Herodotos, Histories 1.66; cf. Diodoros, Library of History 36.2).

However, the passages gathered here in this post illustrate a darker side to stereotypical characterizations. In all of these, Arkadians are imagined to engage in human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios not only in the murky mists of mythical time (as with the story of Lykaon), but in the present. In this context, Arkadians sometimes get placed alongside other supposedly savage or barbaric foreign peoples, including Carthaginians.

Left aside here are passages that deal with the mythical (hence long ago) story of Lykaon offering a child in sacrifice (from which the stereotypical idea above may be an extrapolation) and other passages dealing with supposed Arkadian legends of people turning into wolves who needed to avoid eating human flesh if they wanted to turn back (on which see, for instance, Pausanias, Guide to Greece 6.8, 8.2 and 8.38 and Pliny, Natural History 8.34).

Works consulted: Walter Immerwahr, Die Kulte Und Mythen Arkadiens (Leipzig: Teubner, 1891), especially pages 10-14 (link).

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Plato, Republic

[Reference to human entrails from sacrifices at Lykaia in connection with the story of transformations into a wolf]

(565c-e-566a) [SOKRATES:] “And is it not always the way with the civic institution of the People to put forward one man as its special champion and protector and cherish and magnify him?”
[ADEIMANTOS:] “Yes, it is.”
“This, then, is plain,” I said, “that when a tyrant arises he sprouts from a protectorate root and from nothing else.”
“Very plain.”
“What, then, is the starting-point of the transformation of a protector into a tyrant? Is it not obviously when the protector’s actions begin to reproduce the legend that is told of the shrine of Lykaian Zeus in Arkadia?”
“What is that?” he said.
“The story goes that the person who tastes just one bit of human entrails chopped up with those of other sacrificial victims is inevitably transformed into a wolf. Have you not heard the tale?”
“I have.”
“And is it not true that in a similar manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unholy tongue and lips that have tasted the blood of relatives, banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands. Is it not the inevitable consequence and a decree of fate that such a one be either slain by his enemies or become a tyrant and be transformed from a man into a wolf?” . . . [omitted remainder of dialogue].
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Theophrastos, On Piety

[Lykaians and Carthaginians still practice human sacrifice]

(Porphyry, On Abstention from Animal Meat 2.5.27) For at first, indeed, offerings of fruits were made to the gods. But over time humans became negligent about holiness because fruits were scarce. Through a lack of regular food, they began to eat each other’s flesh (sarkophagein allēlōn). Then, calling on the lower spirit (daimonion) with many prayers, they first began slaying themselves for the gods. Not only did they consecrate to the gods their most beautiful possessions but, going beyond the most beautiful, they offered those from their own descent group (genos).

From this, even today not only in Arkadia during the Lykaian festival [of Zeus] and in Carthage to Kronos they perform human sacrifices (anthrōpothytousin) on behalf of the community, but they also periodically in remembrance of the custom [i.e. of human sacrifice] sprinkle the altars with blood from members of their own tribe (emphylon). They do this even though the sacred rites exclude – by way of proclamation – anyone from participating who may be responsible for the blood of those who are united with him [i.e. murder of a member of his own tribe]! Proceeding from this situation, people made the bodies of other animals substitute for their own place in offerings. . . [omitted sections – for the entire collection of fragments of Theophrastos, On Piety from Porphyry, go to this link].

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Pseudo-Plato, Minos

[Dialogue about what is law?]

• (313-318) SOKRATES: Tell me, what is law? . . . [omitted sections].
• COMPANION: Well, what else should law be, Sokrates, but things loyally accepted? . . . [omitted sections].
• SOKRATES: Then what thing especially of this sort shall we surmise law to be?
• COMPANION: Our resolutions and decrees, I imagine: for how else can one describe law? So that apparently the whole thing, law, as you put it in your question, is a city’s resolution. . . [omitted material].
• SOKRATES: Well now, are not some resolutions good, and others evil?
• COMPANION: Yes, to be sure.
• SOKRATES: And, you know, law was not evil.
• COMPANION: No, indeed.
• SOKRATES: So it is not right to reply, in that simple fashion, that law is a city’s resolution.
• COMPANION: I agree that it is not.
• SOKRATES: An evil resolution, you see, cannot properly be a law.
• COMPANION: No, to be sure.
• SOKRATES: But still, I am quite clear myself that law is some sort of opinion; and since it is not evil opinion, is it not manifest by this time that it is good opinion, granting that law is opinion?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: But what is good opinion? Is it not true opinion?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And true opinion is discovery of reality (or: discovery of what is)?
• COMPANION: Yes, it is.
• SOKRATES: So law tends to be discovery of reality.

[Variations in law / custom among peoples]

• COMPANION: Then how is it, Sokrates, if law is discovery of reality, that we do not always use the same laws on the same matters, if we have thus got realities discovered?
• SOKRATES: Law tends nonetheless to be discovery of reality: but men, who do not use always the same laws, as we observe, are not always able to discover what the law is intent on, namely reality. For come now, let us see if from this point onward we can get it clear whether we use always the same laws or different ones at different times, and whether we all use the same, or some of us use some, and others others.

[Carthaginians and Lykaians in Arkadia consider human sacrifice holy and lawful]

• COMPANION: Why, that, Sokrates, is no difficult matter to determine that the same men do not use always the same laws, and also that different men use different ones. With us, for instance, human sacrifice is not legal but unholy, whereas the Carthaginians perform it as though it is something they consider holy and legal, and that too when some of them sacrifice even their own sons to Kronos, as I assume you yourself have heard. And not merely is it barbarian peoples who use different laws from ours, but our neighbors in Lykaia [i.e. Arkadians] and the descendants of Athamas [Herodotos, Histories 7.197]. You know their sacrifices, even though they are Greeks. Regarding ourselves as well, you obviously know from what you have heard yourself what kind of laws we formerly used in regard to our dead, when we slaughtered sacred victims before the funeral procession, and engaged urn-women to collect the bones from the ashes. Then again, a yet earlier generation used to bury the dead where they were, in the house: but we do none of these things. One might give thousands of other instances; for there is ample means of proving that neither we copy ourselves nor humankind each other always in laws and customs.
• SOKRATES: And it is no wonder, my excellent friend, if what you say is correct, and I have overlooked it. But if you continue to express your views after your own fashion in lengthy speeches, and I speak likewise, we shall never come to any agreement, in my opinion. But if we study the matter jointly, we may perhaps concur. Well now, if you like, hold a joint inquiry with me by asking me questions; or if you prefer, by answering them.
• COMPANION: Why, I am willing, Sokrates, to answer anything you like.

[Persians]

• SOKRATES: Come then, do you consider just things to be unjust and unjust things just, or just things to be just and unjust things unjust?
• COMPANION: I consider just things to be just, and unjust things unjust.
• SOKRATES: And are they so considered among all men elsewhere as they are here?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And among the Persians also?
• COMPANION: Among the Persians also.
• SOKRATES: Always, I presume?
• COMPANION: Always.
• SOKRATES: Are things that weigh more considered heavier here, and things that weigh less lighter, or the contrary?
• COMPANION: No, those that weigh more are considered heavier, and those that weigh less lighter.
• SOKRATES: And is it so in Carthage also, and in Lykaia?
• COMPANION: Yes.

[Universal law]

• SOKRATES: Noble things, it would seem, are everywhere considered noble, and base things base; not base things noble or noble things base.
• COMPANION: That is so.
• SOKRATES: And thus, as a universal rule, realities, and not unrealities, are accepted as real, both among us and among all other men.
• COMPANION: I agree.
• SOKRATES: Then whoever fails to attain reality, fails to attain accepted law.
• COMPANION: In your present way of putting it, SOKRATES, the same things appear to be accepted as lawful both by us and by the rest of the world, always: but when I reflect that we are continually changing our laws in all sorts of ways, I cannot bring myself to assent.

[Greeks and barbarians]

• SOKRATES: Perhaps it is because you do not reflect that when we change our pieces in the game of draughts they are the same pieces. But look at it, as I do, in this way. Have you in your time come across a treatise on healing the sick?
• COMPANION: I have.
• SOKRATES: Then do you know to what art such a treatise belongs?
• COMPANION: I do: medicine.
• SOKRATES: And you give the name of doctors to those who have knowledge of these matters?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: Then do those who have knowledge accept the same views on the same things, or do they accept different views?
• COMPANION: The same, in my opinion.
• SOKRATES: Do Greeks only accept the same views as Greeks on what they know, or do barbarians also agree on these matters, both among themselves and with Greeks?
• COMPANION: It is quite inevitable, I should say, that those who know should agree in accepting the same views, whether Greeks or barbarians.
• SOKRATES: Well answered. And do they so always?
• COMPANION: Yes, it is so always.
• SOKRATES: And do doctors on their part, in their treatises on health, write what they accept as real?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: Then these treatises of the doctors are medical, and medical laws.
• COMPANION: Medical, to be sure.
• SOKRATES: And are agricultural treatises likewise agricultural laws?
• COMPANION: Yes. . . [omitted series of examples with the specific expertise of gardeners, cooks,
• SOKRATES: Very well; and now, whose are the treatises and accepted rules about the government of a city? Of the people who know how to control cities, are they not?
• COMPANION: I agree.
• SOKRATES: And is it anyone else than citizens and royal persons who know?
• COMPANION: It is they, to be sure.
• SOKRATES: Then what people call “laws” are treatises of the city,—writings of kings and good men.
• COMPANION: That is true.
• SOKRATES: And must it not be that those who know will not write differently at different times on the same matters?
• COMPANION: They will not.
• SOKRATES: Nor will they ever change one set of accepted rules for another in respect of the same matters.
• COMPANION: No, indeed.
• SOKRATES: So if we see some persons anywhere doing this, shall we say that those who do so have knowledge, or have none?
• COMPANION: That they have no knowledge.
• SOKRATES: And again, whatever is right, we shall say is lawful for each person, whether in medicine or in cookery or in gardening?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And whatever is not right we shall decline to call lawful?
• COMPANION: We shall decline.
• SOKRATES: Then it becomes unlawful.
• COMPANION: It must.
• SOKRATES: And again, in writings about what is just and unjust, and generally about the government of a city and the proper way of governing it, that which is right is the king’s law, but not so that which is not right, though it seems to be law to those who do not know; for it is unlawful.
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: Then we rightly admitted that law is discovery of reality.
• COMPANION: So it appears.
• SOKRATES: Now let us observe this further point about it. Who has knowledge of distributing seed over land?
• COMPANION: A farmer.
• SOKRATES: And does he distribute the suitable seed to each sort of land?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: Then the farmer is a good apportioner of it, and his laws and distributions are right in this matter?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And who is a good apportioner of notes struck for a tune, skilled in distributing suitable notes, and who is it whose laws are right here?
• COMPANION: The flute-player and the harp-player.
• SOKRATES: Then he who is the best lawyer in these matters is the best flute-player.
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And who is most skilled in distributing food to human bodies? Is it not he who assigns suitable food?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: Then his distributions and laws are best, and whoever is the best lawyer in this matter is also the best apportioner.
• COMPANION: Certainly.
• SOKRATES: Who is he?
• COMPANION: A trainer.
• SOKRATES: He is the best man to pasture the human herd of the body?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And who is the best man to pasture a flock of sheep? What is his name?
• COMPANION: A shepherd.
• SOKRATES: Then the shepherd’s laws are best for sheep.
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And the herdsman’s for oxen.
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: And whose laws are best for the souls of men? The king’s, are they not? Say if you agree.
• COMPANION: I do.
• SOKRATES: Then you are quite right. Now can you tell me who, in former times, has proved himself a good lawgiver in regard to the laws of flute-playing? Perhaps you cannot think of him: would you like me to remind you?
• COMPANION: Do by all means.
• SOKRATES: Then is it Marsyas, by tradition, and his beloved Olympus, the Phrygian?
• COMPANION: That is true.
• SOKRATES: And their flute-tunes also are most divine, and alone stir and make manifest those who are in need of the gods; and to this day they only remain, as being divine.
• COMPANION: That is so.

[Minos of Krete as the ideal early lawgiver]

• SOKRATES: And who by tradition has shown himself a good lawgiver among the ancient kings, so that to this day his ordinances remain, as being divine?
• COMPANION: I cannot think.
• SOKRATES: Do you not know which of the Greeks use the most ancient laws?
• COMPANION: Do you mean the Spartans, and Lykourgos the lawgiver?
• SOKRATES: Why, that is a matter, I assume, of less than three hundred years ago, or but a little more. But whence is it thatthe best of those ordinances come? Do you know?
• COMPANION: From Krete, so they say.
• SOKRATES: Then the people there use the most ancient laws in Greece?
• COMPANION: Yes.
• SOKRATES: Then do you know who were their good kings? Minos and Rhadamanthos, the sons of Zeus and Europa; those laws were theirs.
• COMPANION: Rhadamanthos, they do say, Sokrates, was a just man; but Minos was a savage sort of person, harsh and unjust.
• SOKRATES: Your tale, my excellent friend, is a fiction of Attic tragedy.
• COMPANION: What! Is not this the tradition about Minos?
• SOKRATES: Not in Homer and Hesiod; and yet they are more to be believed than all the tragedians together, from whom you heard your tale.
• COMPANION: Well, and what, pray, is their tale about Minos? . . . [omitted extensive discussion of Minos of Krete as the earliest ideal lawgiver].

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Varro (first century BCE)

[Mention of supposed Arkadian custom of human sacrifice in the retelling of the story of Arkadians transformed into wolves]

(as cited by Augustine, City of Good 18.17) In support of this story [about incredible transformations of men], Varro relates others no less incredible about that most famous sorceress Circe, who changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians. By lot, the Arcadians swam across a certain body of water and were turned into wolves there, and lived in the deserts of that region with wild beasts like themselves. But if they never fed on human flesh for nine years [i.e. while wolves], they were restored to the human form on swimming back again through the same body of water.

Finally, Varro expressly names one Demaenetυs, who, on tasting a boy offered up in sacrifice by the Arcadians to their god Lycaeus according to their custom, was changed into a wolf. After being restored to his proper form in the tenth year, he trained himself as a boxer, and was victorious at the Olympic games. And the same historian [Varro] thinks that the epithet Lycaeus was applied in Arcadia to Pan and Jupiter [i.e. Zeus] for no other reason than this metamorphosis of men into wolves, because it was thought it could not be done except by a divine power. For in the Greek language a wolf is called “λυκός,” from which the name Lycaeus appears to be formed. Varro also says that the Roman Luperci were as it were sprung from the seed of these mysteries.

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Source of translations: H.N. Fowler (d. 1955), W.R.M. Lamb (d. 1961), Paul Shorey (d. 1934), R.G. Bury (d. 1951), Plato in Twelve Volumes, LCL (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1914-1961); T. Taylor, Select Works of Porphyry (London: T. Rodd, 1823); M. Dods, City of God (2 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1913), public domain, adapted by Harland.