of , that is Zagreus) met in Thrace was Lycurgus. When Dionysus was preparing to lead his army from Asia to Europe, he initially struck a friendship with Lycurgus and then allowed his Maenads to cross into the kingdom of the Edoni, which he thought was a friendly country. However, Lycurgus ordered his soldiers to attack the Maenads during the night with the hope of destroying them and Dionysus, but a Thracian named Charops (, ) revealed the plot to Dionysus, whose army was still in Asia. Lycurgus attacked the god's Maenads and massacred them all during the night on Mount Nyseium and then pursued Dionysus himself with a cattle goad, while Dionysus secretly fled into the sea and was given shelter by Thetis. Dionysus then sailed back to his army, which be brought to Thrace, defeated Lycurgus, captured him alive, blinded him, tortured him, and crucified him. After defeating and executing Lycurgus, Dionysus installed Charops as the king of Thrace and initiated him into the secret rites of the mystery cult, thus making him the founder of the Dionysian dynasty in Thrace and a priest-king, with both secular and religious power being henceforth handed down patrilineally. Dionysus in this myth has a zoomorphic, rather than anthropomorphic, nature, and he is referred to as a bull in Graeco-Roman records of the myth. Therefore, in this myth Lycurgus acts as a "herdsman" just as were initiates of the mystery cult of Dionysus. This myth is also one of sacrificial crisis, whereby Lycurgus reversed the proper order of things by chasing the god like an animal. This myth of "Dionysus" and Lycurgus recorded the religious conflict resulting from the Dionysian cult's confrontation with the earlier religious beliefs of ancient Thrace. The myth of "Dionysus" and Lycurgus itself presents the arrival of the cult of Zagreus as happening through infiltration by dividing the people of the lands the god sought to conquer, and implies that the cult of Zagreus arrived in Thrace as part of a period of social and political crisis throughout the Balkan peninsula rather than through human migration: the implantation of the Dionysian religion in Thrace was thus the result of social and cultural changes among the peoples of the Balkan peninsula. The social and demographic in the Balkans led to the migration of the Thracian tribes and their colonisation of neighbouring lands, and is reflected in the myth Lycurgus's