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Updated: June 19, 2025
But they have left mere dissertations; Lykurgus produced an inimitable constitution, confuted those who complained of the unreality of the 'Essay on the True Philosopher, by showing them the spectacle of an entire city acting like philosophers, and thereby obtained for himself a greater reputation than that of any other Greek legislator at any period.
Twenty-eight is the number of Elders mentioned by Aristotle, because of the thirty leading men who took the part of Lykurgus two deserted their post through fear. But Sphairus says that those who shared his opinions were twenty-eight originally.
For, in Sparta, nothing was left without regulation, but, with all the necessary acts of life, Lykurgus mingled some ceremony which might enkindle virtue or discourage vice; indeed he filled his city with examples of this kind, by which the citizens were insensibly moulded and impelled towards honourable pursuits.
XXIX. But in the reign of Agis money found its way into Sparta, and, after money, selfishness and greed for gain came in, on account of Lysander, who, though himself incorruptible, yet filled his country with luxury and love of gold, as he brought back gold and silver from the wars, and disregarded the laws of Lykurgus.
Another was directed against expenditure, and ordered that the roof of every house should consist of beams worked with the axe, and that the doors should be worked with the saw alone, and with no other tools. Lykurgus was the first to perceive the truth which Epameinondas is said in later times to have uttered about his own table, when he said that "such a dinner has no room for treachery."
XXVII. In all these acts of Lykurgus, we cannot find any traces of the injustice and unfairness which some complain of in his laws, which they say are excellent to produce courage, but less so for justice. And the institution called Krypteia, if indeed it is one of the laws of Lykurgus, as Aristotle tells us, would agree with the idea which Plato conceived about him and his system.
Thus was Alkander tamed and subdued, so that he who had been a wicked and insolent youth was made into a modest and prudent man. As a memorial of his misfortune, Lykurgus built the temple of Athene, whom he called Optilitis, for the Dorians in that country call the eyes optiloi.
Timaeus conjectures that there were two men of the name of Lykurgus in Sparta at different times, and that the deeds of both are attributed to one of them, on account of his celebrity. The elder, he thinks, must have lived not far off the time of Homer; indeed some say that he came into the presence of Homer.
Numa made no regulations of this kind, but, while he put an end to military plundering, raised no objection to other methods of making money, nor did he try to reduce inequalities of fortune, but allowed wealth to increase unchecked, and disregarded the influx of poor men into the city and the increase of poverty there, whereas he ought at the very outset, like Lykurgus, while men's fortunes were still tolerably equal, to have raised some barrier against the encroachments of wealth, and to have restrained the terrible evils which take their rise and origin in it.
Yet this fact seems to tell for Lykurgus, that the Romans gained such an enormous increase of power by departing from Numa's policy, while the Lacedaemonians, as soon as they fell away from the discipline of Lykurgus, having been the haughtiest became the most contemptible of Greeks, and not only lost their supremacy, but had even to struggle for their bare existence.
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