From Buxton, The Complete World of Greek Mythology, on the Lycaon story, transgression, and exile:
. . . This tale provides a plausible case of the symbiosis of myth with a ritual. On Mount Lykaion in Arcadia, a cult was practiced in which one of the participants, having (really or symbolically) consumed human flesh was believed to leave human form and become a wolf; if he were able to abstain from human flesh for nine years, he would resume human form once more. Some of the details of the rite . . . suggest that we have an echo of an initiation ritual, which might have at some date have involved a whole age cohort as opposed to just one individual. The eerie ceremony on this remote mountain would thus have marked the prelude to a period spent in the wilds by a group of young Arcadian men; after the expiry of this period they would have returned to the community, no longer as wolfish outsiders, but as fully-fledged citizens. (89)
