Lycurgus in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

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.