S. Augustine declared, in his _De Civitate Dei_, that he knew an old woman who was said to turn men into asses by her enchantments.
Apuleius has left us his charming romance of the _Golden Ass_, in which the hero, through injudicious use of a magical salve, is transformed into that long-eared animal.
It is to be observed that the chief seat of Lycanthropy was Arcadia, and it has been very plausibly suggested that the cause might he traced to the following circumstance:—The natives were a pastoral people, and would consequently suffer very severely from the attacks and depredations of wolves. They would naturally institute a sacrifice to obtain deliverance from this pest, and security for their flocks. This sacrifice consisted in the offering of a child, and it was instituted by Lycaon. From the circumstance of the sacrifice being human, and from the peculiarity of the name of its originator, rose the myth.
But, on the other hand, the story is far too widely spread for us to attribute it to an accidental origin, or to trace it to a local source.
Half the world believes, or believed in, were-wolves, and they were supposed to haunt the Norwegian forests by those who had never remotely been connected with Arcadia: and the superstition had probably struck deep its roots into the Scandinavian and Teutonic minds, ages before Lycaon existed; and we have only to glance at Oriental literature, to see it as firmly engrafted in the imagination of the Easterns.
Norse Traditions - Manner in which the Change was effected - Vœlundar Kvœda - Instances from the Völsung Saga - Hrolf’s Saga - Kraka - Faroëse Poem - Helga Kvida - Vatnsdæla Saga - Eyrbyggja Saga
In Norway and Iceland certain men were said to be _eigi einhamir_, not of one skin, an idea which had its roots in paganism. The full form of this strange superstition was, that men could take upon them other bodies, and the natures of those beings whose bodies they assumed. The second adopted shape was called by the same name as the original shape, _hamr_, and the expression made use of to designate the transition from one body to another, was at _skipta hömum_, or _at hamaz_; whilst the expedition made in the second form, was the hamför. By this transfiguration extraordinary powers were acquired; the natural strength of the individual was doubled, or quadrupled; he acquired the strength of the beast in whose body he travelled, in addition to his own, and a man thus invigorated was called _hamrammr_.