the celebrated legislator of the Spartans, was the son of Eunomes king of Sparta.—He travelled to Greece to the isle of Crete, to Egypt, and even to the Indies, to converse with the sages and learned men of those countries, and to learn their manners, their customs, and their laws. After the death of his brother Polydectes, who was king of Sparta, his widow offered the crown to Lycurgus, promising that she would make herself miscarry of the child of which she was pregnant, provided he would marry her; but Lycurgus nobly refused these advantageous offers, and afterwards contented himself with being tutor to his nephew Charillus, and restored to him the government when he came of age; but notwithstanding this regular and generous conduct, he was accused of a design to usurp the crown. This calumny obliged him to retire to the island of Crete, where he applied himself to the study of the laws and customs of nations. At his return to Lacedemon, he reformed the government: and, to prevent the disorders occasioned by luxury and the love of riches, he prohibited the use of gold and silver; placed all the citizens in a state of equality; and introduced the strictest temperance, the most exact discipline, and those admirable laws which (a few excepted) have been celebrated by all historians. It is said, that, to engage the Lacedemonians to observe them inviolably, he made them promise with an oath not to change any part of them till his return; and that he afterwards went to the island of Crete, where he killed himself, after having ordered that his ashes should be thrown into the sea, for fear lest if his body should be carried to Sparta the Lacedemonians would think themselves absolved from their oath. He flourished about 870 B.C.