Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/113

Rh L Y C L Y D 97 would be the case with a military aristocracy. The story that Lycurgus restricted Sparta to an iron coinage can not well be reconciled with the fact that silver money was not in use among the Greeks till a century after his time. The organization of the Spartan army was always greatly admired by the ancients. Xenophon praises its system of tactics for &quot; an admirable simplicity in the midst of seeming intricacy,&quot; and in Thucydides (v. G6) we have it described as based on an elaborate graduation of authority, by means of which the general s orders were transmitted to the rank and file with the utmost promptitude and accuracy. The strength of the army consisted mainly in infantry, every Spartan being a heavy-armed soldier, and the light troops being made up out of the Perioeci and Helots. The Spartan cavalry never had much repute, and it was always regarded as a decidedly inferior branch of the service. Nor did they seriously apply themselves to sieges or to sea warfare. Though a brave, they were a very cautious and wary people, and all their military operations were conducted with extreme secrecy. It was a fixed principle with them not to engage the same enemy with needless frequency, and not to carry a pursuit further than victory really required. Anything like cowardice was a disgrace which reduced a citizen to the condition of an outcast. &quot; With it or on it&quot; were the words with which the Spartan mother would bid her son return when he left home with his shield to fight for Sparta. Lycurgus is fairly described by Grot e (Hist, of Greece, chap. 6) as &quot;the founder of a warlike brotherhood rather than the lawgiver of a political community.&quot; The Spartan was to be almost wholly estranged from home ties, and to live only for the state. His training, though admired both by Plato and Aristotle as directed towards a noble ideal, was felt by them to be very imperfect, inasmuch as it cultivated only on 3 side of human virtue and contemplated the circumstances of a camp or a garrison rather than of a state organized on a really perfect basH With ths reforms of Lycurgus Plutarch connects a sweeping readjustment of the entire system of landed pro perty, whereby Laconia was parcelled out into 39,000 equal lots, 9000 being assigned to Spartan citizens, and the remainder to their free subjects, the Perioeci. It was the fashion with certain ancient writers to assume some such measure in the case of every early legislator or reformer. But it is to be noted that we have no hint of any such repartition of land by Lycurgus till we come to Plutarch, and this fact so much impressed Grote that he utterly rejects the story. All historical evidence, lie maintains, points to great inequalities of property among the Spartans from the earliest times, and is therefore irreconcilable with any such belief. Here indeed he seems to be on sure ground, but it may be quite possible that even with equal lots of land there were decided ine qualities in wealth. There may have been citizens rich in flocks and herds pastured on common ground, of which, we have reason to believe, there was considerable extent. Plutarch s account is favoured by the fact that equal distributions of land were often made in early days by conquering peoples. The question is one on which it seems impossible to arrive at a certain and definite con clusion. Possibly, as has been suggested by M. Laveleye, some old tradition of an equality of landed property may have been the origin of the belief that a redivision into equal portions was a part of the system of Lycurgus. There was, however, an equality which he certainly did attempt to establish. Every Spartan, rich or poor, had to submit to the same hard discipline and to aim at the same ideal. The attempt was not altogether unsuccessful, though the subsequent history of Sparta shows that several of her citizens fell so far short of it as to disgrace them selves by actual dishonesty in the public service. But we may fairly credit Lycurgus with a work which laid deep the foundations of a very remarkable and at times a truly noble patriotism both in the men and women of Sparta. The best accounts of Lycurgus and his legislation will be found in Crete s and Thirlwall s histories, and in Miiller s Dorians. The chief original sources from which our knowledge of the subject is derived aie the writings of Plutarch and Xenophon, and Aristotle s Politics. (W. J. B.) LYCURGUS, one of the ten great Attic orators, was born about 396-93 B.C. His father was named Lycophron, and he belonged to the old Attic family of the Eteobutadye. He is said to have been a pupil both of Plato and of Isocrates. His early career is quite unknown, but after the real character of the great struggle with Philip of Macedon was becoming manifest he was recognized along with Demosthenes and Hyperides as one of the chiefs of the national party. He left the care of external relations to his colleagues, and devoted himself to the internal organization and the. financial administration of the state. He managed the finances of Athens for twelve successive years, being chosen ra/xt as T^S /coin}? irpoaoSov, probably, in 341 B.C., for a term of four years, and in the two succeeding terms, when the actual office was forbidden him by law, directing it through a nominal official chosen from his party. Part of one of the deeds in which he rendered account of his term of office is still preserved in an inscription (Corp. Inscr. Gr., i. No. 247; Corp. Inscr. Ait., ii. pt. 2, No. 289). During this time 18,900 talents passed through his hands, and he raised the public income to 1200 talents yearly. His integrity and his skilful management were highly appreciated by the people, who refused to deliver him up when Alexander the Great demanded his surrender ; many private persons deposited money under his charge. He was also appointed to various other offices connected with the preservation and improvement of the city. He was very strict in his superintendence of the public morals, and passed a sumptuary law to restrain extravagance. On the other hand he showed a noble and liberal spirit in all that concerned public expenditure ; he did much to beautify and improve the city by fine buildings ; and he passed a famous law ordering that statues of the three great tragedians should be erected, and that a careful edition of their tragedies should be made and preserved among the state archives. Lycurgus was a man of action and not of words : his orations, of which fifteen were published, are criticized by the ancients for their awkward arrangement of matter, harshness of style, and the ten dency to digressions about mythology and past history, while the noble spirit and the lofty morality that breathe through them art- highly praised. Only one of the orations, that against Leocrates, has been preserved, and fully bears out the criticism of the ancients. He was evidently one of the last examples of the finest Athenian type full of religions feeling, as became one of the Eteobutadw, the family in which the priesthood of Athene Folias was hereditary, proud of the history and the religion of his country, and resolved to act worthily of it and to make others do the same, severe and stern in his treatment of offenders and frequently prosecuting them in the public courts, but generous and liberal in all that concerned the glory of Athens. LYDGATE, JOHN, a monk of Bury St Edmunds, was the most famous English poet of the 15th century. He is a standing refutation of a popular notion that the extra ordinary collapse of English poetry after Chaucer dis appeared from the stage was due to the unsettled state of public affairs. The exact dates of his birth and death arc not ascertained, but he began his occupation as a verse- maker before Chaucer s death, and probably ended it several years before the Wars of the Roses broke out. Public affairs were not more unsettled during his lifetime than during the lifetime of Chaucer. Like Chaucer, XV. 13