It is to be observed that the chief seat of Lycanthropy was Arcadia,
and it has been very plausibly suggested that the cause might he
traced to the following circumstance:--The natives were a pastoral
people, and would consequently suffer very severely from the attacks
and depredations of wolves. They would naturally institute a sacrifice
to obtain deliverance from this pest, and security for their flocks.
This sacrifice consisted in the offering of a child, and it was
instituted by Lycaon. From the circumstance of the sacrifice being
human, and from the peculiarity of the name of its originator, rose
the myth.

But, on the other hand, the story is far too widely spread for us to
attribute it to an accidental origin, or to trace it to a local
source.

Half the world believes, or believed in, were-wolves, and they were
supposed to haunt the Norwegian forests by those who had never
remotely been connected with Arcadia: and the superstition had
probably struck deep its roots into the Scandinavian and Teutonic
minds, ages before Lycaon existed; and we have only to glance at
Oriental literature, to see it as firmly engrafted in the imagination
of the Easterns.



CHAPTER III.

THE WERE-WOLF IN THE NORTH.