Lȳcurgus

Lȳcurgus (Lȳkourgos). 1. Legendary king of the Ēdōnēs, a Thracian people; he persecuted the youthful Dionysus when he came with his nurses seeking refuge, and was consequently struck blind, or driven mad, so that he killed his own son Dryas; he was then eaten alive by wild horses.

2. Legendary legislator of Sparta, about whom nothing certain is known, not even when he lived. He is said to be the founder of the Spartan constitution and the social and military systems, and so of the eunomia, ‘good order’, the name generally applied to these.

3. (c.390–c.325 BC), distinguished Athenian orator and statesman, pupil of Isocrates, and a member of the Eteobutadae genos (a noble family, one branch of which held the hereditary priesthood of Poseidon Erechtheus, another the priestesshood of Athena Polias). Lycurgus was in charge of Athens' finances from the time of her defeat by Philip II of Macedon at Chaeronea in 338 BC until 326. The increase in the size of the navy at this time is attributed to him, and he embarked on an extensive building programme, including the reconstruction in marble of the temple of Dionysus. He won the confidence of his fellow-citizens to such a degree that they refused to surrender him to Philip's son Alexander the Great in 335 when the latter demanded the arrest of those hostile to Macedon. Lycurgus had statues erected of the tragic dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and an official copy made of all their works (later borrowed by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, king of Egypt, for the library at Alexandria). Of his fifteen orations known to the ancients one survives, the indictment for treason of a certain Leōcratēs, for having allegedly fled from Athens at the news of the defeat at Chaeronea. It was said that after his death Lycurgus was accused of having left a deficit in the city treasury, and that when his sons were unable to repay the money they were imprisoned, in spite of a defence by Hypereidēs; after an appeal by Demosthenes they were released.