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Updated: June 19, 2025
Thus Lykurgus the orator excused himself when accused of having bought off some informers who threatened him. "I am glad," said he, "that after so long a public life as mine I should have been at last convicted of giving bribes rather than of receiving them."
Lykurgus, when he banished silver and gold from Sparta, and gave his countrymen useless iron money, did not wish to discourage good household management among them, but he removed the dangerous seductions of wealth out of their reach, in order that they all might enjoy a sufficiency of what was useful and necessary.
It was to this that Lykurgus owed the permanence of his laws; for he could not have trusted to the oaths which he made them take, if he had not by education and training so steeped the minds of the young in the spirit of his laws, and by his method of bringing them up implanted in them such a love for the state, that the most important of his enactments remained in force for more than five hundred years; for the lives of all Spartans seem to have been coloured by these laws.
For this reason, Numa was able to effect his purpose without difficulty, and without any loss of popularity and respect; while Lykurgus was struck and pelted, and in danger of his life, and even so could scarcely carry out his reforms.
I think that the Laconian speech, though it seems so short, yet shows a great grasp of the subject and has great power over the listeners. Lykurgus himself seems to have been short and sententious, to judge from what has been preserved of his sayings; as, for instance, that remark to one who proposed to establish a democracy in the state, "First establish a democracy in your own household."
The whole power of the state was at that time vested in the Ephors and the Senate of Elders, of whom the Ephors are elected every year, while the Elders sit for life. These two bodies were intended as a check upon the power of the kings, who would otherwise have been absolute, as has been explained in the Life of Lykurgus.
It was during this period of disorder that the father of Lykurgus lost his life. He was endeavouring to part two men who were quarrelling, and was killed by a blow from a cook's chopper, leaving the kingdom to his elder son Polydektes. III. He also died after a short time, and, as all thought, Lykurgus ought to have been the next king.
Numa's reforms were all in favour of the people, whom he classified into a mixed and motley multitude of goldsmiths and musicians and cobblers; while the constitution introduced by Lykurgus was severely aristocratic, driving all handicrafts into the hands of slaves and foreigners, and confining the citizens to the use of the spear and shield, as men whose trade was war alone, and who knew nothing but how to obey their leaders and to conquer their enemies.
For these reasons it is said that the rich were bitterly opposed to Lykurgus on this question, and that they caused a tumult and attacked him with shouts of rage. Pelted with stones from many hands, he was forced to run out of the market-place, and take sanctuary in a temple.
When I had written the lives of Lykurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, it appeared to me natural to go back to Romulus also, as I was engaged on the history of times so close to his. So when I was reflecting, in the words of Aeschylus, "Against this chieftain, who can best contend? Whom shall I match in fight, what trusty friend?"
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