Lycurgus of Sparta

Statesman

Flourished: Probably between the ninth and seventh centuries b. c.e.; Sparta

Category: Government and politics

Life Lycurgus (li-KUR-guhs) of Sparta is traditionally credited with all the Spartan institutions of political stability and military success. The Spartans built a shrine for him when he died.

Lycurgus’s eunomia (“good order”) was probably not the work of a single person but rather an accretion. It was both precursor and aftermath to the Spartan enslavement of Messenia. According to the Spartan junior royal house of the Eurypontids, the Spartans began experiencing success in wars with Eurypontid king Charillos’s Eurotas River Valley conquest in the first Olympiad of 776 b. c.e. and Eurypontid king Theopompus’s victory in Messenia because of new brigading and army discipline. Lycurgus’s eunomia came from the eunomus (“good law”) of the previous generation’s Eurypontid king, with Lycurgus acting as a notable Spartan Delphi-consultant.

However, the senior royal house of Agiads made Lycurgus one of their own and enshrined him as the guardian of underage king Leobotes. Lycur-gus brought Cretan military and political institutions to Sparta and had responsibility for all Spartan law.

Influence A great statesman, Lycurgus brokered a great social contract so practical that all subsequent Spartan peculiarities were attributed to him. Ionian proto-historians working on Spartan king lists and chronology could not reconcile two conflicting family traditions, each of which took credit for him. Later historians could not reconcile either one with real life.

Lycurgus of Sparta

Further Reading

Cartledge, Paul. Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History, 1300-362 B. C., 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Forrest, W. G. A History of Sparta. London: Bristol Classics, 1995. Murray, Oswyn. Early Greece. London: Fontana Press, 1980.

O. Kimball Armayor

See also: Government and Law; Spartan Constitution.