Hello everyone!
So.
FORENSICS STATE IS TODAY????
This season went by really quickly!
(too quickly help)
You know what they say, “Beware the Ides of March…”
(aka when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.)
but uhh anyways
Yesterday was Pi Day and I won a Pi contest at our school called “Pi’s Got Talent” (I had made an animation and art piece) so uhhh
I got to pie my math teacher in the face (with much apology because I like him but popular demand) and he was obviously not expecting me to use that amount of force because his head moved back so uh
I digress
Back to Forensics!
I’m sure I’ve told you all at least once about my Forensics piece–“The Tale of Lycaon” written by Ovid himself!
…
unfortunately there are some inaccuracies in the tale that must be addressed.
Apparently, a lot of people get their mythology from Riordian Wiki. Or material with allusions.
…
which is bad.
As much as I think Lycaon from Zenless Zone Zero looks awesome, that’s not what Lycaon was actually like. They’re not even the same color!
(I still like Zenless Zone Lycaon)
But anyway.
Here is the excerpt from Riordan Wiki about Lycaon’s backstory.
Lycaon was once a human king of Arcadia, the son of Pelasgus and Meliboea. He tested Zeus, who was a guest, by serving him human meat, including meat from one of his own sons. He also ordered assassins to attack Zeus while he slept to test his immortality.
Zeus became angry as a result of his actions, and punished Lycaon in the manner which, after Otis and Ephialtes had made an attempt to assail Olympus, he related thus to an assembly of gods: when they had all sat down in their marble recesses, with the highest of them in his place, supported by an ivory scepter, he struck his terrible head thrice or four times, which moved the land, sea, and stars.
Zeus had gone down to earth disguised as a mortal, and had come to the halls of Lycaon in Arcadia. When he announced himself to be a god, the people instantly began to pray. Lycaon, however, mocked their pious prayer. That night, he devised a way to test him, weighed down by sleep, with unexpected death. Thus he was pleased. He then, with a knife, slit the throat of a hostage sent from the Molossian people, softened the half-dead limbs with scorching water, and cooked them with fire. Which as he placed them upon the banquet-table, Zeus recognized the slaughter and unroofed his halls with a vengeful flame. Frightened, he attempted to flee, but meeting the silence of the countryside, he let forth a shriek and tried vainly to speak. His face collected his rage and he was turned by the lust of his wonted slaughter into the livestock, and rejoiced again in blood. His clothes turned into hair, his arms into legs, and he became a wolf, keeping the traces of his old form: he had the same grayness and violence in his face, his eyes shone in the same way, and he had the same image of brutality.
Zeus also killed all of his fifty sons with lightning bolts, except Nyctimus, who was the slaughtered child.
…
okay lets fix this
I’m relating this from Ovid, so could this be true in other sources? Maybe. But here we go.
Okay, first of all, this is a Roman ahh tale. We should be using Iuppiter, or Jove, as it is in Ovid, or at least Jupiter. But nooo.
(I’ll be using “Jove”, not “Zeus,” by the way.)
Anyway.
Nothing in Ovid said that Otus and Ephialtes had attacked just before this. Heck, Lycaon is told to be THE LAST STRAW, and the most recent one (the latest guilt). Nothing worse had happened from that point.
Jove did not strike his head, he shook out “his awful locks”, or SHOOK HIS HAIR AROUND.
He made the earth and stars and ocean TREMBLE, because they knew that this was the sign you go “oh poopy he mad”.
Jove did not go “LA DE DA TYME TO GO DOWN TO ORTH”, he had heard that Earth was in a crap state and didn’t believe it (“I had heard, or so I had hoped, a lie, a falsehood”), so he came down to Earth disguised as a human and proceeded to go, “oh poopy this is bad”.
He didn’t go straight to Arcadia either, he crossed multiple other lands to see how bad the poopy was.
And poopy was baaaad.
He finally came to Arcadia to stay the night, but he didn’t go “YO I’M JUPITER” because that’s stupid. He “gave a sign that a god had come, and people began to worship”. However, Lycaon doesn’t believe it and vows to see for himself if this guy is actually immortal.
He planned to kill Zeus while he slept, implied by his own hands but never outright stated. However, HE WAS NOT AT ALL CONTENT WITH THAT. THAT’S WHERE THE STORY GOES AWRY.
He didn’t serve one of his sons to Jove, you’re thinking of Tantalus. Lycaon took a Molossian hostage, “cut his throat, boiled pieces of his flesh, still warm with life, broiled others”, and set them before on the table”, and served some people stew to Zeus.
Zeus snapped alright (he knew immediately), BUT DIDN’T SET THE PLACE ON FIRE???!! HE’S THE WIELDER OF THUNDER HE STRUCK THE HOUSE WITH LIGHTNING AND BLEW IT UP–
Lycaon ran away, but his transformation didn’t take place how it was stated in the wiki. The lines are this, because this excerpt could not do it justice.
“Foam dripped from his mouth, bloodthirsty still, he turned against the sheep, delighting still in slaughter, and his arms were legs, and his robes shaggy hair, yet he is still Lycaon. The same grayness, the same fierce face, the same red eyes, a picture of bestial savagery.”
Not sure about the son part, but Nyctimus sounds familiar…it was not in Ovid, however. For all I know, Lycaon’s only child is Callisto, and Jove uhhhhhhhhh yeah vfeiwwbhbkdshfviuhh
After this, he commands the gods to “let them pay for it, and quickly!” After which he asks Neptune to cause a flood and wipe out all of Earth’s populus except for literally two people.
But anyways.
That’s the corrected Tale of Lycaon, but the thing that sounds like I asked AI to write me an excerpt about The Tale of Lycaon.
Okay that’s all 
Beware the Ides and see y’all next week!