LYCURGUS, the celebrated legislator of the Spartans, was the son of Eunomes, king of Sparta. He travelled in Greece, the island of Crete, Egypt, and even proceeded to the Indies, to converse with the sages and learned men of those countries, and to learn their manners, customs, and laws. After the death of his brother Polydectes, who was king of Sparta, his widow offered the crown to Lycurgus, promising that she would cause herself to miscarry of the child of which she was pregnant, provided he would marry her; but Lycurgus nobly refused these advantageous offers, and afterwards contented himself with being tutor to his nephew Charillus, whom he restored to the government when he came of age. Notwithstanding this honourable and generous conduct, however, he was accused of a design to usurp the crown. This calumny obliged him to retire to the island of Crete, where he applied himself to the study of the laws and customs of nations. On his return to Lacedaemon, he reformed the government, and, to prevent the disorders occasioned by luxury and the love of riches, he prohibited the use of gold and silver; placed all the citizens in a state of equality; and introduced the strictest temperance, the most exact discipline, and those remarkable laws which, with few exceptions, have been celebrated by all historians. It is said, that, to engage the Lacedaemonians to observe them inviolably, he made them promise upon oath not to change any part of them till his return; and that he afterwards went to the island of Crete, where he killed himself, having ordered that his ashes should be thrown into the sea, from fear lest, if his body should be carried to Sparta, the Lacedaemonians would think themselves absolved from their oath. He flourished about 870 b. c.

Lycürgus, one of the most celebrated orators of Greece, was born at Athens about the year b. c. 400, and died about B. c. 323. He was son of Lycophron, and grandson of Lycurgus, one or other of whom was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants, b. c. 404 (Phot. Cod. cclxviii. p. 1483). In his early years he studied philosophy under Plato, and the political constitution of his country under Isocrates. At what period he entered upon public life is nowhere recorded, but we find him, b. c. 343, appointed, along with Demosthenes, one of the ambassadors to counteract the proceedings of Philip in different parts of Greece (Demosth. Philipp, iii. p. 129). So much confidence had his fellow-citizens in his integrity, that he continued to preside over the collection of the public revenue for twelve or fifteen years. After the defeat of the Greeks at the battle of Chaeronea, b. c. 338, he brought Lysicles, the general of the Athenians on that occasion, to trial before the people, and procured his condemnation (Diodor. Sicul. xvi. 88). He restored the credit of comic exhibitions at the Lenaean festival, and enacted honours for the three great tragic poets ( Vit. X. Or. p. 841). Lycurgus was one of the orators demanded by Alexander, after the destruction of Thebes, b. c. 335; but the Athenians refused to give him up (Plut. Demosth. c. 23; Arrian, Exp. i. 10). It would appear that Lycurgus died about the time of the exile of Demosthenes, b. c. 323, the year before that orator’s death (Vit. x. Or. p. 842). There were fifteen orations of Lycurgus extant in the time of Plutarch and Photius, but only one has been preserved (against Leocrates), which was delivered b. c. 330. It is published by Hauptmann (Lips. 1751), by Schulze (Bruns. 1789), by Osann (Jena, 1821), and, along with other fragments, by Bekker (Magdeb. 1821).