Esther Eidinow reads a paper on "Beware of the Wolf: Reading Plato on Mt. Lykaion"

This paper developed from wondering about contemporary attitudes to Greek myths of metamorphosis. It examines one well-known and very brief mention of an Arkadian werewolf myth in Plato’s Republic, used in his description of the development of a tyrant. The passage has usually been read as a source for the rituals that are assumed to have taken place in the sanctuary of Zeus Lykaios on Mount Lykaion in Arkadia. These rituals, some argue, involved a human sacrifice and the consumption of human flesh, after which a man ‘became a wolf’; if, after nine years, he had not tasted human flesh again, he returned to humanity, otherwise he remained a wolf. But such an interpretation of the passage fails to offer a parallel to the case of the tyrant, who, Plato makes clear, cannot be redeemed. This paper suggests that a clearer sense of the analogy may emerge from reconsideration, first, of the myth’s narratives: this enables the drawing out of possible alternative contemporary meanings. But, in addition, the historical and geographical contexts of this analogy are also important, and this paper explores the question of why Plato chose to draw specifically on an Arkadian myth.
The paper is part of a wider project that aims to progress research on the interaction between the individual and ‘culture’ in the context of ancient Greek religion, focusing on questions of the nature, process and conception of change in ritual practice and beliefs over time and place. It builds on two arguments: first, a recasting of ‘embeddedness’ which facilitates a particular focus on the role of the individual and/or institution as relational (using Harrison White’s conception of social network theory); second, within that new version of ‘embeddedness’, a potential reconfiguration of the conception of the individual that emphasises the role and perception of the ‘relational self’ in both a cosmological framework (involving relations with supernatural entities) and the socio-political framework (of larger groups and communities, including, but not only, the polis). The project centres on narratives as constitutive of relational networks, and this research project is focusing on myths of mortal metamorphosis.