Lycurgus

Concerning Lycurgus the lawgiver, in general, nothing can be said which is not disputed, since indeed there are different accounts of his birth, his travels, his death, and above all, of his work as lawmaker and statesman; and there is least agreement among historians as to the times in which the man lived. Some say that he flourished at the same time with Iphitus, and in concert with him established the Olympic truce. Among these is Aristotle the philosopher, and he alleges as proof the discus at Olympia on which an inscription preserves the name of Lycurgus.[*](As joining with Iphitus in founding, or reviving, the Olympic games, in 776 B.C., the date assigned to the first recorded victory. Cf. Pausanias, v. 4, 5 f.; 20, 1. A stay of hostilities was observed all over Greece during the festival.)

But those who compute the time by the successions of kings at Sparta, like Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, prove that Lycurgus was many years earlier than the first Olympiad.[*](776-73 B.C.) And Timaeus conjectures that there were two Lycurgus at Sparta, at different times, and that to one of them the achievements of both were ascribed, owing to his greater fame; he thinks also that the elder of the two lived not far from the times of Homer, and some assert that he actually met Homer face to face.

Xenophon, also,[*](Reip. Lac. x. 8.Lycurgus is said to have lived in the times of the Heracleidae.) makes an impression of simplicity in the passage where he says that Lycurgus lived in the time of the Heracleidae. For in lineage, of course, the latest of the Spartan kings were also Heracleidae; but Xenophon apparently wishes to use the name Heracleidae of the first and more immediate descendants of Heracles, so famous in story. However, although the history of these times is such a maze, I shall try, in presenting my narrative, to follow those authors who are least contradicted, or who have the most notable witnesses for what they have written about the man.

For instance, Simonides the poet says that Lycurgus was not the son of Eunomus, but that both Lycurgus and Eunomus were sons of Prytanis; whereas most writers give a different genealogy, as follows: Aristodemus begat Procles, Procles begat Soüs, Soüs begat Eurypon, and he begat Prytanis, from whom sprang Eunomus, and from Eunomus Polydectes by a first wife, and Lycurgus, who was a younger son by a second wife, Dionassa, as Dieutychidas has written, making Lycurgus sixth from Procles, and eleventh from Heracles.[*](Aristodemus, from whose twin sons Eurysthenes and Procles the elder and younger royal lines at Sparta (the Agids and Eurypontids) were descended, was the son of Aristomachus, the son of Cleodaeus, the son of Hyllus, the son of Heracles. See Pausanias, iii. 1-10; Herodotus, vii. 204 and viii. 131.)

Of these ancestors of Lycurgus, Soüs was most famous, under whom the Spartans made the Helots their slaves, and acquired by conquest from the Arcadians a large additional tract of land. It is also related of this Soüs that when he was besieged by the Cleitorians in a rough and waterless place, he agreed to surrender to them the land which he had conquered if he himself and all his men with him should drink from the adjacent spring.

After the oaths to this agreement were taken, he assembled his men and offered his kingdom to the one who should not drink; no one of them, however, could forbear, but all of them drank, whereupon Soüs himself went down last of all to the water, sprinkled his face merely, while the enemy were still at hand to see, and then marched away and retained his territory, on the plea that all had not drunk. But although on these grounds he was held in great admiration, his royal line was not named from him, but were called Eurypontids from his son, because Eurypon appears to have been the first king to relax the excessive absolutism of his sway, seeking favour and popularity with the multitude.