May 23, 2007

Lycanthropes

Last post by Suramya and Manish's latest post inspired me for this word. Lycanthropes mean werewolves.
But real meaning of lycanthrope is someone who suffers from a mental disease and only thinks he has changed into a wolf.
Trivia - The trivia behind lycanthrope is related to greek myth of Lycaon. Lycaon was king of Arcadia and in the time of ancient greeks , was notorious for his cruelty. God Zeus once disguised himself as a traveller and sought hospitality in the court of vicious king Lycaon. The king recognized the god and tried to kill him.He served him a flesh of a child. God Zeus identified the terrible trick and destroyed the palace outrageously and condemned Lycaon to spend his rest of the life as a wolf.
Lykos means wolf and anthropos means man.

Sources :- www.pantheon.org,
www.westegg.com/etymology
image - www.bigfella.com/violent.dir/werwv.jpg

5 comments:

suramya said...

wow, I didn't know this world, and such a grisly and interesting tale behind it,the greeks have such a colourful mythology, I guess this is one tale I can tell my cousin brothers when the clamour for adventure stories.

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

flesh of a child....Ouch!!! i wasn't aware of the word either.....
I have just acquired a book on Greek mythology which has the stories in quick condensed forms....let me check if it has this one...

Anthropos...hmmm, the root for anthropology!!!

Unknown said...

@suramya,moi - When the owner of the blog is greek god of quizzing, you should see more greek myth trivias. This was nothing in front of that.

Unknown said...

was

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

what a pithy statement , 666 :)