Lycurgus
（
Λυκοῦργος).
1.
A king of Thrace, who, when Bacchus was passing through his country, assailed him so
furiously that the god was obliged to take refuge with Thetis. Bacchus avenged himself by
driving Lycurgus mad, and the latter thereupon killed his own son Dryas with a blow of an
axe, taking him for a vine-branch. The land became, in consequence, sterile; and his
subjects, having been informed by an oracle that it would not regain its fertility until the
monarch was put to death, bound Lycurgus, and left him on Mount Pangaeus, where he was
destroyed by wild horses (
Apollod. iii.5.1).
2.
King in Arcadia, son of Aleus and Neaera, brother of Cepheus and Augé, husband
of Cleophilé, Eurynomé, or Antinoë, and father of Ancaeus,
Epochus, Amphidamas, and Iasus. Lycurgus killed Areïthoüs, who used to
fight with a club. Lycurgus bequeathed this club to his slave Ereuthalion, his sons having
died before him.
3.
Son of Pronax and brother of Amphithea, the wife of Adrastus. He took part in the war of
the Seven against Thebes, and fought with Amphiaraüs. He is mentioned among those
whom Aesculapius called to life again after their death.
4.
King of Nemea, son of Pheres and Periclymene, brother of Admetus, husband of
Eurydicé or Amphithea, and father of Opheltes.
5.
A Spartan legislator of whose personal history we have no certain information; and there
are such discrepancies respecting him in the ancient writers that many modern critics have
denied his real existence altogether. The more generally received account about him was as
follows: Lycurgus was the son of Eunomus, king of Sparta, and brother of Polydectes. The
latter succeeded his father as king of Sparta, and afterwards died, leaving his queen with
child. The ambitious woman proposed to Lycurgus to destroy her offspring if he would share
the throne with her. He seemingly consented; but when she had given birth to a son
(Charilaüs), he openly proclaimed him king, and as next of kin acted as his
guardian. But to avoid all suspicion of ambitious designs, with which the opposite party
charged him, Lycurgus left Sparta, and set out on his celebrated travels, which had been
magnified to a fabulous extent. He is said to have visited Crete, and there to have studied
the wise laws of Minos. Next he went to Ionia and Egypt, and is reported to have penetrated
into Libya, Iberia, and even India. In Ionia he is said to have met either with Homer
himself, or at least with the Homeric poems, which he introduced into the mother-country. The
return of Lycurgus to Sparta was hailed by all parties. Sparta was in a state of anarchy and
turbulence, and he was considered as the man who alone could cure the growing diseases of the
State. He undertook the task; yet before he set to work he strengthened himself with the
authority of the Delphic oracle and with a strong party of influential men at Sparta. The reform seems not to have been carried altogether peaceably. The new
division of the land among the citizens must have violated many existing interests. But all
opposition was overborne, and the whole constitution, military and civil, was remodelled.
After Lycurgus had obtained for his institutions an approving oracle of the national god of
Delphi, he exacted a promise from the people not to make any alterations in his laws before
his return, and then he left Sparta to finish his life in voluntary exile, in order that his
countrymen might be bound by their oath to preserve his constitution inviolate forever. Where
and how he died nobody could tell. He vanished from the earth like a god, leaving no traces
behind him but his spirit; and he was honoured as a god at Sparta with a temple and yearly
sacrifices down to the latest times. The date of Lycurgus is variously given, but it is
impossible to place it later than B.C. 825. Lycurgus was regarded through all subsequent ages
as the legislator of Sparta, and therefore almost all the Spartan institutions were ascribed
to him as their author. See
Sparta.
6.
An Athenian orator, and one of the warmest supporters of the democratic faction in the
contest with Philip of Macedon. The time of his birth is uncertain, but he was older than
Demosthenes; and if his father was put to death by order of the Thirty Tyrants, he must have
been born previous to B.C. 404. But the words of the biographer are, as Clinton has justly
remarked, ambiguous (
Fast. Hell. ii. p. 151), and may imply that it was his
grandfather who was put to death by the Thirty. Lycurgus is said to have derived instruction
from Plato and Isocrates. He took an active part in the management of public affairs, and was
one of the Athenian ambassadors who succeeded (B.C. 343) in counteracting the designs of
Philip against Ambracia and the Peloponnesus. He filled the office of treasurer of the public
revenue for three periods of five years (
Diod. Sic.xvi. 88); and
was noted for the integrity and ability with which he discharged the duties of his office.
Böckh considers that Lycurgus was the only statesman of antiquity who had a real
knowledge of the management of finance. He raised the revenue to twelve hundred talents, and
also erected, during his administration, many public buildings, and completed the docks, the
armory, the theatre of Bacchus, and the Panathenaic course. So great confidence was placed in
the honesty of Lycurgus that many citizens confided to his custody large sums; and, shortly
before his death, he had the accounts of his public administration engraved on stone, and set
up in a part of the wrestling-school. An inscription, preserved to the present day,
containing some accounts of a manager of the public revenue, is supposed by Böckh to
be a part of the accounts of Lycurgus. After the battle of Chaeronea (B.C. 388), Lycurgus
conducted the accusation against the Athenian general Lysicles. He was one of the orators
demanded by Alexander after the destruction of Thebes (B.C. 335). He died about B.C. 323, and
was buried in the Academia (Pausan. i. 29, 15). Fifteen years after his death, upon the
ascendency of the democratic faction, a decree was passed by the Athenian people that public
honours should be paid to Lycurgus. A brazen statue of him was erected in the Ceramicus,
which was seen by Pansanias (i. 8, 3), and the representative of his family was allowed
the privilege of dining in the Prytaneum. This decree, which was proposed by Stratocles, has
come down to us at the end of the lives of the Ten Orators. Lycurgus is said to have
published fifteen orations, of which only one has been preserved. This oration, which was
delivered B.C. 331, is an accusation of Leocrates (
Κατὰ
Λεωκράτους), as Athenian citizen, for abandoning Athens after the battle of
Chaeronea, and settling in another Grecian State. The best editions of Lycurgus are those of
Osann
(Jena, 1821), Mätzner
(1836), Kiessling and Meier
(1847), Rehdantz
(1876), and Thalheim
(1880). See
also
Dürrbach, L'Orateur Lycurgue (1890). Another
excellent text is that of Bekker, in his
Oratores Attici. The oration of
Lycurgus is also found in the collections of Reiske and Dobson.
