MJ 



LYCURGUS. 



LYELL, SIR CHARLES. 



81 



hu travel*. The oommou accouuU make these marvellously extensive. 

 He is taid to hTe visited Crete, Atia Minor (there to have mot with 

 Homer, oratleut found the Homeric poems), Egypt, Libya, Iberia, 

 and India ; and in all these countries to have studied their political 

 constitutions. He at length, fortified by a prediction from Delphi 

 declaring his eminent wisdom, returned to his native land, which he 

 found reduced to a pitiable state by the continued dissensions of the 

 various parties, who all however joined in imploring him to undertake 

 the reformation of the state. He complied. Of the nature of bis 

 constitution on historical account will be found in the GEOGRAPHICAL 

 Division, under the head of SPARTA. Having accomplished this 

 object, though not without an active opposition that even threatened 

 his life, ho exacted an oath from the people that no change should be 

 made in any of the institutions, and then voluntarily exiled himself, 

 so that they should never be released from their oath. He first pro- 

 ceeded to Delphi, whence he transmitted a sanction of his institutions 

 from the orncle. Nothing is recorded as to bis death, though Delphi, 

 Crete, and Elis, all claimed his tomb ; but there was a legendary 

 belief that he had been called to join the gods, and a temple was 

 erected in Sparta to his memory. It is tolerably certain however that 

 many of the institutions supposed to be peculiar to Sparta were in 

 existence in Sparta itself, as well as in other parts of Greece, before 

 the time of Lycurgus. 



LYCURGUS, the Athenian orator, the son of Lycophron, and the 

 grandson of Lycurgus, who is ridiculed by Aristophanes (' Birds,' 

 1. 1296), was one of the warmest supporters of the democratical party 

 in the contest with Philip of Macedon. The time of his birth is 

 uncertain, but he was older than Demosthenes (Liban., 'ArR. Aris- 

 togiton ') ; and if his father was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants 

 (' Vital Decern Orat,' p. 841, B.), he must have been born previous to 

 B.C. 404 ; but the words of the biographer are, as Mr. Clinton has 

 justly remarked (' Fast. Hell.,' vol. ii, p. 151), ambiguous, and may 

 imply that it was his grandfather who was put to death by the 

 Thirty. 



Lycurgus is said to have received instruction from Plato and 

 leocrates. He took an active part in the management of public 

 affaire, and was one of the Athenian ambassadors who succeeded 

 (B.C. 343) in counteracting the designs of Philip against Ambracia 

 and Peloponnesus (DemoRth., ' Philip,' iii., p. 129, ed. Reiske,) He 

 filled the office of treasurer of the public revenue for three periods of 

 five years, that is, according to the ancient idiom, twelve years (Diod. 

 Sic., xvi. 88) ; and was noted for the integrity and ability with which 

 he discharged the duties of his office. Bockh (' Public Economy of 

 Athens,' vol. ii., p. 183, EngL transl.) considers that Lycurgus was the 

 only statesman of antiquity who had a real knowledge of the manage- 

 ment of finance. He raised the revenue to twelve hundred talents, 

 and also erected during his administration many public buildings, and 

 completed the docks, the armoury, the theatre of Bacchus, and the 

 Panatheuaic course. So great confidence was placed in the honesty 

 of Lycurgus, that many citizens confided to his custody large sums 

 of money ; and shortly before his death he had the accounts of his 

 public administration engraved on stone and set up in part of the 

 wrestling-school. An inscription, preserved to the present day, con- 

 taining some accounts of a manager of the public revenue, is supposed 

 by Bockh to be a part of the accounts of Lycurgus. (See the 

 inscription in Bbkch's ' Corpus Inecriptionum Graecarum,' vol. L, 

 p. 25u, No. 157.) 



After the battle of Chaeroneia (B.C. 338) Lycurgus conducted the 

 accusation agaiust the Athenian general Lysicles. He was one of the 

 orators demanded by Alexander after the destruction of Thebes, 

 B.C. 335. He died about the year B.C. 323, and was buried in the 

 Academia. (Pausan., i. 29, 15.) Fifteen years after his death, upon 

 the ascendancy of the democratical party, a decree was passed by the 

 Athenian people that public honours should be paid to Lycurgus; 

 a brazen statue of him was erected in the Ceramicus, which was seen 

 by Pausanias (i. 8, 3), and the representative of his family wan 

 allowed the privilege of dining in the I'rytuueurn. This decree, which 

 was proposed by Stratocles, has come down to us at the end of the 

 ' Lives of the Ten Orators.' 



Lycurgus is said to have published fifteen orations (' Vita) Dec. 

 Orat,' p. 843, C. ; Photius, ' Cod.,' 268) ; of which only one has come 

 down to us. This oration, which was delivered n.c. 330, is an accu- 

 sation of Leocrates (KOTO A(aiKpdrovs), an Athenian citizen, for 

 abandoning Athens after the battle of Chaoroiieia, and settling in 

 another Grecian state. The eloquence of Lycurgus is greatly praised 

 by Diodorus Siculus (xvi. 88), but is justly characterised by Diouysius 

 of Halicaraaasus as deficient in case and elegance (vol. v., p. 433, ed. 

 Reiske). 



The best editions of Lycurgus are by Taylor, who published, it 

 with the ' Oration of Demosthenes against Midias,' Camb., 1743 ; 

 Becker, 1821 ; Pinzger, 1824 ; Blume, 1827; Baiter and Sauppe, 1834, 

 and Miitzner, 1830. It is also included in the edition of the 'Oratores 

 Gtceci,' by Reiske and Bekker, and Las been translated into French 

 by Auger, ParU, 1788. 



LYDGATE, JOHN, an ancient English poet, one of the successors 

 of Chaucer, was a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds 

 in Suffolk. The dates of only a few of the events of his life have been 

 ascertained. He was ordained a eubdeacon in 1389, a deacon in 1393, 



and a priest in 1397 ; whence it lias been conjectured that he was born 

 about 1375. Wartou says he seems to have arrived at his greatest 

 eminence about 1430. After a short education at Oxford, he travelled 

 nto France and Italy, and returned a complete master of the language 

 and literature of both countries. He chiefly studied Dante, Boccaccio, 

 and Alain Cbartier, and became so distinguished a proficient in polite 

 earning, that he opened a school in his monastery for teaching the 

 sons of the nobility versification and composition. Although philology 

 was his subject, he was not unacquainted with the philosophy of the 

 day : he was not only a poet and a rhetorician, but a geometrician, 

 an astronomer, a theologist, and a disputant Wartou was of opinion 

 that Lydgato " made considerable additions to those amplifications of 

 our language, in which Chaucer, Gower, and Occleve led the way ; " 

 and that he was the first of our writers whose stylo was clothed with 

 that perspicuity in which the English phraseology appears at this day 

 to an English reader. 



To enumerate Lydgate's pieces would be to write the catalogue of a 

 little library ; Ritson, in his ' Bibliographia Poetica,' has given a list 

 of no fewer than two hundred and fifty-one. No poet seems to have 

 possessed greater versatility. His most esteemed works are his ' Story 

 sf Thebes,' his 'Fall of Princes, 1 and his 'History, Siege, and Destruc- 

 tion of Troy.' The first is printed by Spight in his edition of Chaucer ; 

 the second, the ' Fall of Princes,' or ' Boke of Jouan Bocbas ' (first 

 printed by Pynson in 1494, and several times since), is a translation 

 From Boccaccio, or rather from a French paraphrase of his work, 'De 

 Casibus Virorum et Feminarum Illustriuin.' 'The History of Troy" 

 was first printed by Pynson in 1513, but more correctly by Morshe in 

 1555, and was once the most popular of his works. 



A pension of Tl. 13*. 4rf. for life was granted to Lydgate by King 

 Henry VL in 1440, probably upon the presentation to that monarch, 

 when he visited St. Edmunds Bury, of a manuscript Life of St Edmund, 

 the patron saint of the monastery. This manuscript is still preserved 

 in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, No. 2278, and is one 

 of the most splendidly illuminated manuscripts in that great repository 

 which also contains in the old Royal, Cottonian, Harleian, and Lana- 

 downe collections, other splendid manuscripts of Lydgate's various 

 poems. 



A note in Wanley's part of th& ' Harleian Catalogue of Manuscripts ' 

 seems to insinuate that Lydgate did not die till 1482, which is impro- 

 bable. He was certainly alive in 1446 ; and the best authorities place 

 his death about 1461. 



LYDUS, JOANNES LAURENTIUS, was born at Philadelphia in 

 Lydia (whence he derived his surname) about A.D. 490. At the age 

 of twenty-one he repaired to Constantinople, and was employed for 

 forty years at the court of the emperor in various official duties, lie 

 died about the latter end of Justinian's reign. Lydus appears to have 

 been well acquainted with Greek and Roman antiquities; and his 

 works, which are said to have been written after he had retired from 

 the Imperial court, contain much curious information on the mythology 

 and history of several of the nations of antiquity. 



Three works of Lydus have come down to us one ' On the Magis- 

 trates of the Kornau Republic,' edited by Hase, Paris, 1812 ; a second, 

 'On the Months,' which was originally published by Schow, Leipzig, 

 1794, and has since been edited by Roether, Leipzig, 1827 ; and a third, 

 ' On Omens and Prodigies,' which has also been published by Hase, 

 with a fac-sirnile of the manuscript from which the edition has been 

 printed. The best edition of Lydus is by Bekker, Bonn, 1S37, which 

 forms a part of the ' Corpus Schptoruin Historiao byzantinw.' 



LYE, EDWARD, an English clergyman, distinguished by the 

 attention which he paid to the Saxon and Gothic languages and litera- 

 ture, was born at Totness in 1704. Ho was educated in the University 

 of Oxford, and received the living of Houghtou Parva in Northamp- 

 tonshire, which he exchanged for that of Yardley Hastings. This 

 appears to have, been all the preferment he enjoyed. He died in 1707. 



The publications of Lye are all in that rare department of literature 

 to which he especially devoted himself. The first was an edition of 

 the manuscript left by Francis Juuius [JuNlus], entitled 'Etymo- 

 logicum Anglicauum.' This manuscript had long lain in the Bodleian 

 Library, no one having the courage or the knowledge aud leisure 

 sufficient to undertake the publication of it, to the great regret of all 

 scholars both at home and abroad. This Lye accomplished, aud the 

 work appeared, with some additions and suitable prolegomena, in a 

 folio volume, 1743. He also published, at the desire, of Jierzelius, 

 bishop of Upsal, an edition of that .singular remain of the Gothic 

 language, the pareut of many dialects, the translation of the Evange- 

 lists, commonly called Ulphilas's version. During the whole course of 

 his studies he had kept in view the preparation of a large dictionary 

 of the Anglo-Saxon and Gothic languages. This great undertaking he 

 had just completed, having actually delivered the manuscript to the 

 printer, when death took him away. His labour however was not lost, 

 the work being published in 177^ in two folio volumes. There is a 

 fuller account of this eminent person in Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes 

 of the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ix., pp. 751-753. 



* LYELL, SIR CHARLES, an eminent living geologist, is the eldest 

 eon of Charles Lyell, Esq., of Kinuordy, Forfarshire, who died in 184U. 

 Sir Charles was born at Kiuuordy, iu Forfarshire, on the 14th of 

 November, 171*7. He received his early education at Midhurst, in 

 Sussex, and was subsequently entered at Exeter College, Oxford, 



