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Home  »  Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men  »  Lycurgus

S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.

Lycurgus

  • [The Spartan lawgiver; lived, according to Aristotle, more than 850 B.C.; refusing the crown he had inherited, he visited foreign countries, and returned to Sparta, making many radical changes in the social and political system; having imposed a strong aristocratic constitution, by which domestic affairs were regulated by the state, he obtained from the people an oath that they would not alter his laws during his absence; and went into exile, from which he never returned.]
  • Try it in your own households.

  • When some one recommended democracy to him, and advised him to establish it in Sparta—PLUTARCH: Life.
  • To those who asked whether they should enclose Sparta in walls, he said, “That city is well fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick.”
  • The Spartans let their hair grow long, because Lycurgus said, “A large head of hair makes the handsome more graceful, and the ugly more terrible.”—Ibid.