LYCURGUS, the lawgiver of Sparta, of whose birth and the period of his existence the accounts are very discordant. By some even his reality has been doubted, but we thiuk without sufficient reason. Aristotle makes him a contemporary of the king Iphitus, who lived B.C. 884. Xenophon places him 200 years earlier. He was certainly of the royal family, but his name does not occur as king among the oldest monuments of Grecian history. Herodotue calls him the guardian of his nephew; Labotas, the Eurythenid. Simonides says he was the brother of Eunomus the Proclid ; Dionysius, that he was the uncle of Eunomus; and the more common account, that he was the son of Eunomus, and guardian to his young nephew Charilaus, the eon of Polydectes, brother of Lycurgus. It is certain that historically nothing is known sufficiently to verify a single act attributed to Lycurgus; but as all ancient history concurs in attributiog to him the formation of the constitution under which Sparta so long con tinued to hold an eminent rank in Greece, even the fictions (if they are fictions) possess considerable interest. Laconia, from its earliest settlement by the Dorians, was governed by two kings. In the time of Lycurgus the nation was rent by dissensions: the kings were aiming to become despots ; the people anxious to establish a democracy. On the death of Polydectes he left hie queen pregnant, who proposed that Lycurgus should marry her, mount the throne, and that she should destroy her unborn offspring. Lycurgus temporised till a son was born, whom he immediately caused to be proclaimed king ; and to avoid any suspicion of a sinister ambition shortly after set out upon his travels. The common accounts make these marvellously extensive.
He is said to have visited Crete, Asia Minor (there to have met with Homer, or at least found the Homeric: poems), Egypt, Libya, Iberia, and India ; and in all these countries to have studied their political constitutions. He at length, fortified by a prediction from Delphi declaring his eminent wisdom, returned to his native land, which he found reduced to a pitiable state by the continued dissensions of the various parties, who all however joined in imploring him to undertake tho reformation of the state. He complied. Of the nature of his constitution an historical account will be found in the GEOGRAPHICAL Divianox, under the head of SPARTA. Having accomplished this object, though not without an active opposition that even threatened his life, ho exacted an oath from the people that no change should be made in anyof the institutions, and then voluntarily exiled himself, so that they should never be released from their oath. He first pro ceeded to Delphi, whence he transmitted a sanction of his institutions from the oracle. Nothing is recorded as to his death, though Delphi, Crete, and Elia, all claimed his tomb ; but there was a legendary belief that he had been called to join the gods, and a temple was erected in Sparta to his memory. It is tolerably certain however that many of the institutions supposed to be peculiar to Sparta were in existence in Sparta itself, as well as in other parts of Greece, before the time of Lycurgus.