LYCAON, in Greek mythology, son of Pelasgus, the mythical first king of Arcadia. He, or his fifty impious sons, entertained Zeus and set before him a dish of human flesh; the god pushed away the dish in disgust and either killed the king and his sons by lightning or turned them into wolves (Apollodorus iii. 8; Ovid, _Metam._ i. 198). Some say that Lycaon slew and dished up his own son Nyctimus (Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ ii. 36; Nonnus, _Dionys._ xviii. 20; Arnobius iv. 24). The deluge was said to have been sent by Zeus in the time of Deucalion in consequence of the sons' impiety. Pausanias (viii. 2) says that Lycaon sacrificed a child to Zeus on the altar on mount Lycaeus, and immediately after the sacrifice was turned into a wolf. This gave rise to the story that a man was turned into a wolf at each annual sacrifice to Zeus Lycaeus, but recovered his human form if he abstained from human flesh for ten years. The oldest city, the oldest cultus (that of Zeus Lycaeus), and the first civilization of Arcadia are attributed to Lycaon. His story has been variously interpreted. According to Weizsäcker, he was an old Pelasgian or pre-Hellenic god, to whom human sacrifice was offered, bearing a non-Hellenic name similar to [Greek: Lykos], whence the story originated of his metamorphosis into a wolf. His cult was driven out by that of the Hellenic Zeus, and Lycaon himself was afterwards represented as an evil spirit, who had insulted the new deity by setting human flesh before him. Robertson Smith considers the sacrifices offered to the wolf-Zeus in Arcadia to have been originally cannibal feasts of a wolf-tribe, who recognized the wolf as their totem. Usener and others identify Lycaon with Zeus Lycaeus, the god of light, who slays his son Nyctimus (the dark) or is succeeded by him, in allusion to the perpetual succession of night and day. According to Ed. Meyer, the belief that Zeus Lycaeus accepted human sacrifice in the form of a wolf was the origin of the myth that Lycaon, the founder of his cult, became a wolf, i.e. participated in the nature of the god by the act of sacrifice, as did all who afterwards duly performed it. W. Mannhardt sees in the ceremony an allusion to certain agricultural rites, the object of which was to prevent the failure of the crops and to avert pestilence (or to protect them and the flocks against the ravages of wolves). Others (e.g. V. Bérard) take Zeus Lycaeus for a Semitic Baal, whose worship was imported into Arcadia by the Phoenicians; Immerwahr identifies him with Zeus Phyxios, the god of the exile who flees on account of his having shed blood. Another explanation is that the place of the sacred wolf once worshipped in Arcadia was taken in cult by Zeus Lycaeus, and in popular tradition by Lycaon, the ancestor of the Arcadians, who was supposed to have been punished for his insulting treatment of Zeus. It is possible that the whole may be merely a reminiscence of a superstition similar to the familiar werwolf stories. Entry: LYCAON
ANTIOPE. (1) In Greek legend, the mother of Amphion and Zethus, and, according to Homer (_Od_. xi. 260), a daughter of the Boeotian river-god Asopus. In later poems she is called the daughter of Nycteus or Lycurgus. Her beauty attracted Zeus, who, assuming the form of a satyr, took her by force (Apollodorus iii. 5). After this she was carried off by Epopeus, king of Sicyon, who would not give her up till compelled by her uncle Lycus. On the way home she gave birth, in the neighbourhood of Eleutherae on Mount Cithaeron, to the twins Amphion and Zethus, of whom Amphion was the son of the god, and Zethus the son of Epopeus. Both were left to be brought up by herdsmen. At Thebes Antiope now suffered from the persecution of Dirce, the wife of Lycus, but at last escaped towards Eleutherae, and there found shelter, unknowingly, in the house where her two sons were living as herdsmen. Here she was discovered by Dirce, who ordered the two young men to tie her to the horns of a wild bull. They were about to obey, when the old herdsman, who had brought them up, revealed his secret, and they carried out the punishment on Dirce instead (Hyginus, _Fab._ 8). For this, it is said, Dionysus, to whose worship Dirce had been devoted, visited Antiope with madness, which caused her to wander restlessly all over Greece till she was cured, and married by Phocus of Tithorca, on Mount Parnassus, where both were buried in one grave (Pausanias ix. 17, x. 32). Entry: ANTIOPE
Plants in which there are two cotyledons produced in the embryo are _dicotyledonous_. The two cotyledons thus formed are opposite to each other (figs. 42 and 45), but are not always of the same size. Thus, in Abronia and other members of the order Nyctaginaceae, one of them is smaller than the other (often very small), and in _Carapa guianensis_ there appears to be only one, in consequence of the intimate union which takes place between the two. The union between the cotyledonary leaves may continue after the young plant begins to germinate. Such embryos have been called _pseudomonocotyledonous_. The texture of the cotyledons varies. They may be thick, as in the pea (fig. 42), exhibiting no traces of venation, with their flat internal surfaces in contact, and their backs more or less convex; or they may be in the form of thin and delicate laminae, flattened on both sides, and having distinct venation, as in _Ricinus_, _Jatropha_, _Euonymus_, &c. The cotyledons usually form the greater part of the mature embryo, and this is remarkably well seen in such exalbuminous seeds as the bean and pea. Entry: FIG