Thus, we are confronted with several interpretations of Lykeios. There were three basic ways of understanding the epithet, as deriving from the Lycians, light, or the wolf; among the derivations from wolf, there were again three options: the totemistic interpretation, Apollo as wolf totem; the agricultural one, Apollo as protector of the herds against wolves; and the sociological one, Apollo as leader of adolescent wolf societies. Some theories were more easily refuted than others: the connection with “light” is linguistically unsound, the one with Lycia crumbled as soon as it became clear that Leto was no Lycian goddess, and totemism preceded shamanism as a widely over-used concept; neither should be generalized outside the cultures in which it was found. In the end, we are left with the sociological interpretation, and the agricultural one. Both Apollo, the young, and the city resonate with the cult of Apollo: he truely is god of cattle and sheep, and he is the leader of young adolescents; the main question was which of these functions was prior or “original,” and which was secondary and derived.
This raises an interesting methodological question. There are other instances in Greek religion where these two interpretations oppose each other. The most conspicuous one is the case of Demeter who presides over the crops, and over the fertility of the married women: here too, the priority was at stake, and the answer used to be the same as in Apollo’s case: “originally,” Demeter was a goddess of agriculture (and Apollo a god of cattle), but then this function was metaphorically transferred onto children, the fruit of women, or upon young men, organized in “herds” and living outside the polis, as cattle and herdsmen did. The only reason for this choice was the assumption that agricultural (or pastoral) concerns were at the core of religion because man was first an agriculturalist and pastoralist and only later turned into a city-dweller.
This frame of reference was challenged by Émile Durkheim, the founder of French sociology. For Durkheim, religion and ritual was not connected with fertility, but with social cohesion and identity: rituals created social unity and established social order, and religion was the main force that shaped early men into a functioning group. Thus, the interpretation depends solely on the frame of reference for the data that we have from antiquity. For the agricultural/pastoral frame, social concerns develop out of agricultural ones and are metaphors of them; for the sociological frame, agriculture/pastoral life is a metaphor for social concerns.
The development of prehistory has made it possible to decide between the two frames of interpretation. Prehistoric research has shown that agriculture and husbandry developed rather late, in about 8000/ 7000 BCE, in what has been called the Neolithic Revolution. Society preceded agriculture and husbandry for many millennia, already when homo sapiens (and even his predecessors) existed in the African savannahs, there were social groups, bands of hunters and gatherers, and they must have developed ritual instruments to hold these groups together. The agricultural interpretation of ritual is secondary, and relatively young.
