I've been zeroing in on the myth of King Lycaon as a good origin point for "patient zero" of the lycanthrope species in my story. From what I can tell, he's generally regarded to be an entirely fictional person, rather than someone whose life was embellished. Which means that none of the sources I've looked at considered it worthwhile to mention the timeframe in which he was even claimed to have lived. Given what has been said about him, such as how he was allegedly one of the early kings of Arcadia in Ancient Greece, if a King Lycaon did exist, what would be a good timeframe for me to place his birth date in?
According to this article: King Lycaon: The First Werewolf he lived in the age known as "Once upon a time".
This idea was also used in Teen Wolf (1985). Lycaon already has a myth that means what it meant - is your story going to develop or recontextualize the myth? (if not, perhaps consider making something up rather than appropriating) The Ancient Greeks have a strong sense that they aren't that many generations removed from the heroes And they're often right about that - the names are more likely to have corresponded to real kings than not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_(region) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption < Lycaon is a contemporary of Deucalion and this is the flooding event most often associated with the Deucalion myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_invasion So you could probably get away with sometime around 1600BC. I also went through and looked up the rough foundation dates for all the cities Lycaon's sons were said to have founded in Arcadia, and the earliest evidence for them seems to be ~700BC. And Hesiod (650-750BC) who tells the first surving version of the myth seems to have predated the archaeology. Probably he wouldn't have been too bothered by when the flood was or when the cities were founded - he's got a story to tell, which is similar to The Binding (which was probably already in the Torah by 900BC). I specialized 100% in literature with zero history, and I regret I couldn't you find a good reference for when the Arcadians settled in Arcadia, but it might be that they pushed out the Pelasgians or another aboriginal group that had been there for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest the Arcadians come along and take over around 1100BC during the dark ages that followed the eruption (maybe they were exploiting a power vacuum caused by the Dorians duffing up the Myceneans). In the generations after the conquest, they upgrade Lycaon from chief war-criminal into hero - as part of the usual playbook for covering up the fact that they had to wipe out the region's existing ancient cultures before they could build any towns and roads etc. That would give a clear couple of centuries for him to turn from historical figure to mythological figure. And also might explain the wolf imagery and his being connected to a gruesome myth. 1100BC would get you a lot more archaeological sources than 1600BC, so you might be able to find sources for things like clothing and weapons if you need that sort of thing. It's more than likely there is a pot somewhere that totally disproves that, but it might at least feel like the sort of thing that went on.
I'm gonna throw in that I would put a possible Lycon back into the start of the Mycenaean period of Greece as to my knowledge, or at least a quick check on Wikipedia, tellls that he founded some cities and cults and thus I would connect him in the story to a more organized and possibly stratified society. I'm curious as you think that it would be necessary to cover up a conquest? Ancient cultures didn't generally, to my knowledge, have the same negative look on conquests and wars of aggression as we have today with two world wars in hindsight. It was far more common to celebrate victorious conquerors than to think that there was something that should be obfuscated or played down. Hence I am more inclined to think that Lycon would work better as a native talent than some sort of arrival into the area.
I subscribe to the view that "ancient cultures weren't ancient". The way propaganda works is extremely similar:- They deserved it. It was a just war. We had to get Menelaus' missus back. We brought them roads and infrastructure. They were being beastly to our colonists. They were cosying up to the Persians. They would have done it to us first. We were fulfilling a treaty obligation. Homer doesn't start the Iliad off with "Sing me the tortures, Muse, that we dished out to the conquered Trojans..." It isn't anti-war in our sense, but I think it's a mistake to read it as rip-roaring stuff about how men were menlier in the good old days - there's a carefully-constructed macrocosm between Achilles' wrath and the war - taken too far the one becomes unclean, implying the other does too. The gods place the highest value on forgiveness, and it's opened to the reader that "maybe if they'd forgiven Paris before the start of the story, all those spears wouldn't have been stuck through the bladders of brave Greek people like us, and we wouldn't have had to kill all those Trojan women, children, and old people." At the very least, the Greeks had some morals: they don't go in for poetic descriptions of themselves building ziggurats out of civilian prisoners' severed heads, or ritually publicly strangling all the captives... and they don't celebrate the grislier aspects of ethnic cleansing. Arguably, of course they wouldn't, because a large part of their economy is based on slavery, and revolts are expensive. I couldn't find the OP a good book on Arcadia for 1600BC to 700BC, and Wikipedia etc leaves an open question did the Arcadians do things to a Pelasgian or other aboriginal population that didn't bear repeating, and then use the old trick of claiming to be autocthonous. We were always here, we're the oldest tribe in Greece, even speak a bit differently. Our towns all enter the archaeological record around the same time because we had a big public tidy up a few hundred years ago. King Lycaon, that was it. Local history? No, to tell the truth we've never been very big on writing things down around here - you want those Athenians over the water, they go in for that sort of thing. It's the OP's problem not mine, I'm just offering a line of attack that might give some dark elements for a contemporary werewolf story, and suggesting to steer away from real mythology unless there's going to be tight intertexts set up with Hesiod, Ovid, and (ideally, also) the Torah. There's this book that might help as background though - for both the periods suggested:- https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofgre0000bier_t8x4/page/94/mode/2up It doesn't seem to go into detail on Arcadia specifically, and the place might have been quite self-contained. This one has some info on how hero cults might have been used to claim long connections to an area:- https://archive.org/details/ancientgreekhero0000inte/page/116/mode/2up But nothing specific to Lycaon or Arcadia. https://archive.org/details/historyofancient0000hatz_k5n5/page/22/mode/2up Small bit about the Arcadians invading Arcadia and then being isolated by a subsequent Dorian invasion. +(p21)that probably the Arcadians drove out the previous occupants, and were already an advanced society when they invaded
And I disagree. I think there are many uniting things for mankind but I also think that socities and culture, and with that connected norms, values etc. changes as well. That's a major point in reading about ancient, or medieval, cultures in that they hold very different ideas and values from me and there are many "Oh, I never thought of that before" in regards to how, from me, distant culture handled some aspects of being human on the planet Earth. There are many characters in Homer's epics act with a morality which is very different from our own. And I think that you very trying to take ancient cconflicts and cultures and dress in modern 21st century Western clothes. It don't think it fits. I agree that Priam's scene with Achilles is very touching, as is Hector's farewell to his family. But at the end it there are also dialogues where people are, I'm too lazy to give a direct quote here but I can dig it up if you really like to see it. Where they acknowledge that they will live in splendid excess compared to the common people but also that they must be ready to die young. And I agree that it isn't 300 or should be that. However, acknowledging that the life of warrior aristocrats are not just good stuff but also pain and, probably, a young death is the price for them. There is a acknowlegement for the price of being a warior but I see precious little material for how not joining the war is considered better than fighting. Hyperbole or Strawman, I'm not sure, because these extreme examples are so far from my point that I don't see how they are relevant. What makes you think it wasn't just so that the Arcadian considered themselves to be autocthonous without any kind shenaningan going? Because it looks like there's no passage supporting your idea here. And you probably know that in the Classical age a great deal was written which haven't come down to us. The Athenians were certainly not the only place were things was written down.
