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A digression on Lacedaemonian history, containing accounts of (1) Lycurgus (c. 65), (2) the foundation of the Lacedaemonian hegemony, especially the war with Tegea. (For the questions as to Lycurgus cf. especially Meyer, F. i. 213-86.) I. Lycurgus a ‘heroized god’. The historical reality of Lycurgus is often denied (e.g. by Meyer (u. s.); Busolt, i. 578; Gilbert, G. C. A. p. 15; Bury, p. 135) because: 1. The evidence for him is late; apart from Simonides (Plut. Lyc. 1) H. is our oldest witness; the fragments of Tyrtaeus never mention him; yet it is equally hard to believe either that Tyrtaeus would have said nothing of Lycurgus, had he ever existed, or that any mention of him by Tyrtaeus, had there been one, would have failed to be quoted when the subject was so much discussed. 2. The statements as to Lycurgus are contradictory (cf. 65. 4 for variations of date); and his work was attributed by Hellanicus to Eurysthenes and Procles (Fr. 91; F. H. G. i. 57). 3. His name (i. e. ‘Wolfheart’, Meyer, u. s. 281, or ‘LightWorker’, Gilbert) is suspicious, as are also those of his father (Eunomus or Prytanis, Plut. 1), and of his son (Eucosmus, Paus. iii. 16. 5). 4. He was worshipped as a god at Sparta (v. i.), and Meyer (ii. 277) denies that we find mortals deified in Greece before Alexander; but this is doubtful. 5. Greek legends tended to ascribe all institutions to some lawgiver; cf. Solon, Zaleucus, &c. ‘The omnipotence of law’ is a ‘strange Greek superstition’; ‘they have no sufficient conception of the way in which things are stronger than men, and the passive resistance of circumstances stronger than the insight and will of an individual’ (Oncken, Arist. Staats.-Lehre, i. 244-5). Meyer (F. i. 279) goes so far as to suggest that the legend of Lycurgus as founder grew up ‘gradually after the Persian wars, when the Spartans became conscious of the peculiar character of their native institutions’. He is ‘borrowed from the original population, like the cults of Helen, the Dioscuri, and Agamemnon’ (ib. p. 282). Hence Lyc. is a ‘heroized divinity’; Gilbert makes him a form of Apollo Αύκειος, Meyer (ib. 282, following Wilamowitz) and Busolt of Zeus Λυκαῖος (the ‘Wolf-Zeus’), an Arcadian god. Grote, Curtius, Holm, and others, however, make II. Lycurgus a real man. 1. Because of the analogy of similar legends; Charlemagne, Roland, and Archbishop Turpin are historical persons, however much their story was embellished in the Chansons de Geste (cf. the discussion as to the historical existence of King Arthur, E. B. ii9. 651). 2. The peculiar character of Spartan institutions is best explained by the dominating personality of some individual, who did not invent them, but who systematized them and rendered them permanent. Holm (i. 188) well compares the part played by the Doge Gradenigo in settling the Venetian constitution, Reich the foundation by great personalities of the religious orders in the Roman Church. III. Lycurgus a historical fiction. A further difficulty arises from the archaeological discoveries of the British School at Sparta since 1906: these show that the city was a centre of art down to after 600 B.C., and then almost suddenly ceases to be so. It is possible that the Lycurgean ἀγωγή actually dates from this period, and was the work of a reformer (perhaps of Chilon, cf. 59. 2 n.), who attributed his drastic innovations to a supposed ancient founder, or that at any rate an old and weakly enforced discipline was reintroduced in a stricter form. (For this latter view cf. Dickins in Class. Quart. v. 241.) Such a view would account for the absence of genuine tradition as to Lycurgus, while it satisfies the main argument for his existence, viz. that a strong personality is needed to explain so peculiar a development. If, however, we accept the personality of Lycurgus (Frazer, v. 606, goes so far as to say ‘It should never have been called in question’), it must be admitted that we know nothing of him; H.'s account is not real history; it is only valuable as the fifth century official Lacedaemonian account of history. (See Note D, p. 449.)
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