Lycurgus
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Lycurgus. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a Spartan lawgiver. It is not at all certain that he was a real personage. Tradition relates that Lycurgus flourished about 900 B. C. According to popular accounts he refused the crown for himself, traveled in distant countries to study government, returned to Sparta, established a reformed plan of government, bound his neighbors to observe his laws until he came back, and then set out on a journey to return no more. The measures and institutions attributed to Lycurgus, or at least to this age, are both social and political. 1. A redistribution of land. Just what is meant by this step is not clear. It rests on the authority of Plutarch. 2. An army composed of all able-bodied Spartans. This placed the control of the situation in the hands of the citizens of a single city, Sparta. It created a warrior or governing class. 3. A reservation to the Lacedaemons, who were the citizens of associated or, more properly, subject cities, of trade, agriculture, and the handicrafts. These city people had a limited sphere of local government but no voice in central affairs. 4. A class of serfs known as helots. Menial work was performed by them. The helots comprised four-fifths of the population. They represented, no doubt, a conquered, enslaved people. 5. Two kings instead of one. This division of royal power between two kings was expected to act as a check on royalty and to prevent the development of despotism. 6. A senate of thirty elders. These elders held office for life. They were heads of noble families. The senate outweighed the kings, who were in reality but the agents of the senate. 7. A popular assembly. Membership was open to all free Spartans. This assembly chose senators and decided such matters as were laid before it. 8. The senate had a veto power, "if the people decide anything crookedly to put it back." 9. Ephors or dictators. Five magistrates were elected by the assembly yearly. They presided over the assembly and acted as judges in important matters. There was no appeal from them. Even the king, over whom they held the power of life and death, could not appeal from their decisions. The institutions of Lycurgus may have been entirely the work of conquering invaders who established themselves in the city of Sparta and imposed their institutions on a surrounding people and on a serf population dominated by these agricultural and trading inhabitants. Spartan society and government contained at once combined elements of despotism, feudalism, aristocracy, and democracy.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A celebrated lawgiver of Sparta , son of King Eunomus and brother to Polydectes . He succeeded his brother on the Spartan throne. In the laws which he enacted he maintained a just equilibrium between the throne and the people; he banished luxury and encouraged the useful arts, and adopted a number of measures having for their object the well-being of the people. Lycurgus has been compared with Solon , the celebrated legislator of Athens .
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the lawgiver of Sparta; usually dated about 820 B. C. He was uncle of the young King Charilaos, and governed the states wisely during his nephew's infancy, then traveled over Crete, Ionia, and Egypt, and on his return, finding his country in complete anarchy, made a new division of property, and remodelled the whole constitution, military and civil. Next he bound the citizens by oath not to change his laws till he came back, and then left Sparta to be no more seen. His memory was honored as that of a god with a temple and yearly sacrifices.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's in 1910 already hedged that "it is not at all certain that he was a real personage," while Collier's in 1921 flatly dated him to about 820 B.C. and repeated his travels in Crete, Ionia and Egypt; the 1900 Classical Characters even gave him a father, a brother and a throne. Modern scholarship has gone the whole way with Aiton's doubt: Lycurgus is generally treated as a legendary figure, and the institutions credited to him — the dual kingship, the gerousia, the ephorate, the common messes — are seen as the product of a gradual development across the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. rather than one reformer's programme. The equal redistribution of land, which Aiton rightly noted "rests on the authority of Plutarch" (writing some 800 years after the supposed events), is now widely regarded as part of a later idealised picture of Sparta, the so-called "Spartan mirage" fed by Athenian admirers and Hellenistic propaganda. What survives of the old account is its outline of the Spartan system itself, which is still taught much as Aiton described it, minus its inventor.
Written for this edition, 2026.