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Why do the Arcadians stone persons who
voluntarily enter the Lycaeon ; but if such persons
enter through ignorance, they send them away to
Eleutherae?
Is it because they were released and set free that
this story gained credence, and is the expression ‘to
Free Town’ (Eleutherae) of the same sort as ‘to
the land of Sans Souci’ and ‘you will come to the
Seat of Satisfaction’?
Or is it in accordance with the legend, since
Eleuther and Lebadus were the only sons of Lycaon
that had no share in the abomination prepared for
Zeus,1 but instead they fled to Boeotia, and there
is community of citizenship between the people of
Lebadeia and the Arcadians, and do they accordingly
[p. 225]
send away to Eleutherae those who involuntarily
enter the inviolate sanctuary of Zeus?
Or is it as Architimus2 relates in his Arcadian
History, that certain men who entered through ignorance were handed over by the Arcadians to the
Phliasians, and by the Phliasians to the Megarians,
and, as they were being conducted from Megara to
Thebes, they were stopped near Eleutherae3 by rain
and thunder and other signs from heaven? Whence,
in fact, some assert that the place acquired the name
of Eleutherae.
The tale, however, that no shadow is cast by a
person who enters the Lycaeon is not true, although
it has acquired widespread credence.4 Is it because
the air turns to clouds, and lowers darkly upon those
who enter? Or is it because he that enters is condemned to death, and the followers of Pythagoras
declare that the spirits of the dead cast no shadow,5
neither do they blink? Or is it because it is the sun
which causes shadow, but the law deprives him that
enters of the sunlight?
This too they relate allegorically : he that enters is
called a ‘deer.’ Wherefore, when Cantharion the
Arcadian deserted to the Eleans while they were at
war with the Arcadians, and with his booty crossed
the inviolate sanctuary, even though he fled to Sparta
after peace had been made, the Spartans surrendered
him to the Arcadians, since the god ordered them to
give back ‘the deer.’
[p. 227]
1 The serving of human flesh. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 163 ff. and Frazer's note on Apollodorus, Bibliotheca iii. 8. 1 (L.C.L. vol. i. pp. 390 ff.).
2 Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. vol. iv. p. 317.
3 A town in Attica not far from the borders of Boeotia.
4 Cf. Pausanias, viii. 38. 6; Polybius, xvi. 12. 7, whose source is Theopompus.
5 Cf. Moralia, 564 d. See also Dante, Purgatorio, iii. 25-30, 94-97.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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