VII.
LYCURGUS
Lycurgus was the son of Lycophron and grandson of the Lycurgus whom the Thirty Tyrants put to death, his execution being brought about by Aristodemus of Batê, who also, after having been one of the Hellenotamiae,
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was banished under the democracy. Lycurgus was of the deme of the Butadae and the family of the Eteobutadae. He attended the lectures of Plato the philosopher and at first devoted himself to philosophy; then, after being a pupil of the orator Isocrates, he had a notable public career both as a speaker and as a man of action, and he was also entrusted with the management of the finances of the State; for he was made treasurer for three periods of four years
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in charge of fourteen thousand talents, or, as some say (and among them the man who proposed the vote of honours for him,
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Stratocles the orator), eighteen thousand, six hundred and fifty.
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He was elected in his own person the first time, but afterwards he entered the name of one of his friends, though he himself administered the office, because a law had previously been introduced forbidding anyone elected treasurer of the public funds to hold the office more than four years; and he was always intent upon the public business summer and winter. When he was elected to provide munitions of war he restored many edifices in the city, he provided four hundred triremes for the people, he constructed the gymnasium in the Lyceum and planted trees in it, he built the palaestra and finished the Dionysiac theatre when he was the commissioner in charge of that work.
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He took care of two hundred and fifty talents entrusted to him on deposit by private persons, he provided for the city objects of gold and silver for use in processions and golden Victories, and many buildings which came into his hands half-finished he completed, among them the ship-sheds and the arsenal. And he put the foundation-walls round the Panathenaic stadium. This he accomplished, and also the levelling of the ravine, because a certain Deinias who owned this plot of land gave it to the city when Lycurgus suggested to him that he make the gift.
He was charged also with guarding the city and arresting malefactors, whom he drove out entirely, so that some of the sophists said that Lycurgus signed warrants against evil-doers with a pen dipped, not in ink, but in death. And therefore, when King Alexander demanded his surrender, the people did not give him up. When Philip was carrying on the second war with the Athenians, Lycurgus went as envoy with Polyeuctus and Demosthenes to the Peloponnesus and to some other States. Throughout his life he was always highly esteemed among the Athenians and considered a just man, so that in the courts of law the word of Lycurgus was regarded as a help to anyone requiring an advocate.
He also introduced laws: the law relating to comic actors, that a competitive performance be held on the festival of Pots
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and that the victor’s name be inscribed as eligible for the City Dionysia,
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which had not been permitted before, and thus he revived a contest which had fallen out of use; the law that bronze statues of the poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides be erected, that their tragedies be written out and kept in a public depository, and that the clerk of the State read them to the actors who were to perform their plays for comparison of the texts and that it be unlawful to depart from the authorized text in acting; a third law that no Athenian or foreign resident of Athens should be permitted to buy from among captives a person of free birth to be a slave without the consent of his former master
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; furthermore, that a festival of Poseidon should be held in Peiraeus, consisting of no fewer than three cyclic choruses, that not less than ten minas be given to the victors, eight to those ranked second by the judges, and six to those ranked third; furthermore, that no woman should go to Eleusis
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in a carriage, lest the women of the people appear inferior to the rich, and if any woman should be caught doing this, she should pay a fine of six thousand drachmas. His own wife disobeyed, the informers caught her in the act, and he gave them a talent; and at a later time, wrhen accused of this in the popular assembly, he said,
At any rate I am found to have been the giver, not the receiver.
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And once when a taxcollector laid hands on Xenocrates the philosopher and Lycurgus met him as he was leading him away to enforce payment of his tax as a resident alien,
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he brought his walking-stick down on the tax-collector’s head, set Xenocrates free, and shut the other man up in prison for improper conduct. As he was generally commended for his act, Xenocrates, happening to meet Lycurgus’s children some days later, said
I have repaid your father quickly for the favour he did me, boys; for he is widely commended for coming to my assistance.
He also proposed decrees,
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making use of a certain Olynthian named Eucleides, who was an expert in decrees. And although he was well-to-do, he wore one and the same cloak winter and summer and put on sandals only on days when they wTere necessary. He studied night and day, since he had no natural gift for extemporaneous speaking, and he lay on a cot with only a sheepskin and a pillow on it, so that he might wake up easily and study. When someone found fault with him for paying money to sophists although he made words his profession, he replied that if anyone would promise to make his sons better, he would pay him, not thousands only, but half his property. He was an outspoken speaker on account of his good birth. Once, indeed, when the Athenians were showing dissent as he was speaking, he burst out with:
O Corcyraean whip, how ma ly talents you are worth!
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And when they were proclaiming Alexander a god,
What sort of god, he said,
is he when those who
come out of his temple have to sprinkle themselves with holy water? After his death his sons were handed over to the eleven executioners on the accusation of Menesaechmus, the indictment being written by Thrasycles; but when Demosthenes, who was at that time in exile, wrote a letter to the Athenians
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saying that their reputation was suffering because of Lycurgus’s sons, they changed their mind and released them, Democles, a pupil of Theophrastus, speaking in their defence. He himself and some of his descendants were buried at public expense; and their monuments are opposite the Paeonian Athena in the garden of the philosopher Melanthius
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; they are in the form of tables, and those of Lycurgus and his children have inscriptions and are still preserved in our day. His greatest achievement was the raising of the State revenue to twelve hundred talents when it had previously been sixty. When he was at the point of death he gave orders that he be carried to the temple of the Great Mother and into the Bouleuterion,
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as he wished to give an accounting for his public acts; and when no one had the face to accuse him except Menesaechmus, he freed himself from his false accusations, was carried to his house, and died,
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having been considered a honourable man throughout his whole life, and highly praised for his speeches. He never was convicted, though many brought accusations against him.
He had three children by Callisto, the daughter of Habron and sister of Callias the son of Habron of the deme Batê, the one who was treasurer of military funds in the archonship of Charondas.
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Deinarchus, in his speech against Pistius, tells about this connexion by marriage. He left three sons, Habron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron, of whom Habron and Lycurgus died without issue. However, Habron at any rate had a distinguished public career before he died; but Lycophron married Callistomachê, daughter of Philippus of Aexonê, and had a daughter Callisto. She was married to Cleombrotus of Acharnae, son of Deinocrates, to whom she bore a son Lycophron, who was adopted by his grandfather Lycophron and died without issue. After Lycophron’s death Socrates married Callisto and had a son Symmachus. Symmachus had a son Aristonymus, he a son Charmides, and Charmides a daughter Philippa. Her son by Lysander was Medeius, who became an expounder of rites,
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being of the family of the Eumolpidae. He and Timothea, daughter of Glaucus, had three children, Laodameia and Medeius, who held the priestship of Poseidon-Erechtheus, and Philippa, who afterwards became priestess of Athena; but before that Diocles of Melitê married her, and their son was the Diocles who was general in command of the heavy-armed force. He married Hedistê, daughter of Habron, and bad two children, Philippides and Nicostrata. Themistocles, the Torch-bearer,
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son of Theophrastus, married Nicostrata and had two sons, Theophrastus and Diocles. He also organized the priesthood of Poseidon-Erechtheus.
Fifteen speeches of the orator are current.
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He was crowned by the people many times and was honoured with statues. A bronze statue
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of him stands in the Cerameicus, set up in accordance with a decree passed in the archonship of Anaxicrates,
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in which year Lycurgus and his eldest descendant were granted maintenance in the Prytaneum by the same decree. After Lycurgus died his eldest son, Lycophron, brought a suit for the grant. Lycurgus spoke also many times on religious matters, bringing suit against Autolycus the Areopagite, Lysicles the general, Demades the son of Demeas, Menesaechmus, and many others, and he caused them all to be convicted. He also brought Diphilus to trial, who removed from the silver mines the rock props which supported the weight above and made himself rich from them contrary to the law; and though the penalty for this was death, Lycurgus brought about his conviction, and from the confiscated estate distributed fifty drachmas to every citizen, since the total sum collected was one hundred and sixty talents or, as some say, he distributed a mina to each citizen.
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He it was who called Aristogeiton, Leocrates, and Autolycus to account for cowardice. Lycurgus was nicknamed
Ibis,
An ibis for Lycurgus, for Chaerephon a bat.
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His family was derived ultimately from Erechtheus, the son of Gaea and Poseidon, but in the nearest generations from Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people honoured with funerals at the public expense; and this succession from father to son of those of the family who have been priests of Poseidon exists on a complete tablet which has been set up in the Erechtheum, painted by Ismenias the Chalcidian; and there are wooden statues of Lycurgus and his sons Habron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron, made by Timarchus and Cephisodotus, the sons of Praxiteles. But the tablet was put up by his son Habron, who received the priesthood by inheritance and handed it over to his brother Lycophron; and that is why Habron is represented as handing Lycophron the trident. And Lycurgus had a record made of all his acts as a public official and set it up on a tablet, for all men to see who wished, in front of the palaestra that he had built; no one, however, could convict him of embezzlement. He made the motion to crown Neoptolemus the son of Anticles and to set up a statue of him because he had promised to gild the altar of Apollo
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in the Market-place in accordance with the God’s prophecy. He also moved a decree granting honours to Diotimus, son of Diopeithes, of the deme Euonymus, in the archonship of Ctesicles.
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Vitae decem oratorum. Plutarch. Harold North Fowler (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.
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