Note 114 — Chapter IV · HEROES

According to Paus. the ghost was explained to be one of the companions of Odysseus. Strabo says more particularly Polites, who was one of these. But a copy of an ancient picture representing the adventure called the daimon Lykas and made him black and grim-looking and dressed in a wolf-skin. The last is probably merely symbolic and represents full wolf-shape such as belonged to the Athenian Hero Lykos: Harp. δεκάζων. Wolf-shape given to a death-bringing spirit of the underworld, as often: cf. Roscher, Kynanth. 60–1. This must have been the more ancient form of the legend and the daimon was only subsequently changed into a Hero.