Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/359

 LYKUKGUS, AS DESCKIBED BY HERODOTUS. 343 and by all the Olympic gods. Is it as god or as man that 1 am to address thee in the spirit ? I hesitate, and yet, Lycur^us, I incline more to call thee a god." So spake the Pythian priestess. " Moreover, in addition to these words, some affirm that the Pythia revealed to him the order of things now established among the Spartans. But the Lacedcemonians themselves say, that Lycurgas, when guardian of his nephew Labotas, king of the Spartans, introduced these insti- tutions out of Krete. No sooner had he obtained this guardian- ship, than he changed all the institutions into their present form, and took security against any transgression of it. Next, he con- stituted the military divisions, the Enomoties and the Triakads, as well as the Syssitia, or public mess : he also, farther, appointed the ephors and the senate. By this means the Spartans passed from bad to good order : to Lycurgus, after his death, they built a temple, and they still worship him reverentially. And as might naturally be expected in a productive soil, and with no inconsid- erable numbers of men, they immediately took a start forward, and flourished so much that they could not be content to remain tranquil within their own limits," etc. Such is our oldest statement (coming from Herodotus) respect- ing Lykurgus, ascribing to him that entire order of things which the writer witnessed at Sparta. Thucydides also, though not mentioning Lykurgus, agrees in stating that the system among the Lacedcemonians, as he saw it, had been adopted by them four centuries previously, had rescued them from the most intoler- able disorders, and had immediately conducted them to prosper- ity and success. 1 Hellanikus, whose writings a little preceded those of Herodotus, not only did not (any more than Thucydides) make mention of Lykurgus, but can hardly be thought to have attached any importance to the name ; since he attributed the constitution of Sparta to the first kings, Eurysthenes and Prokles. 2 But those later writers, from whom Plutarch chiefly compiled his biography, profess to be far better informed on the subject of Lykurgus, and enter more into detail. His father, we are told, was assassinated during the preceding state of lawlessness ; his elder brother Polydektes died early, leaving a pregnant widow, 1 Herodot i. 65-66 ; Thucyd. i. IS. a Strabo, viii. p. 3G3.