I. With regard to Lykurgus the lawgiver there is nothing whatever that is undisputed; as his birth, his travels, his death, and, besides all this, his legislation, have all been related in various ways; and also the dates of his birth do not in any way accord.  Some say that he was contemporary with Iphitus, and with him settled the conditions of the Olympic truce; and among these is Aristotle the philosopher, who adduces as a proof of it the quoit which is at Olympia, on which the name of Lykurgus is still preserved.  Others, among them Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, by computing the reigns of the kings of Sparta,[A] prove that he must have lived many years before the first Olympiad.  Timaeus conjectures that there were two men of the name of Lykurgus in Sparta at different times, and that the deeds of both are attributed to one of them, on account of his celebrity.  The elder, he thinks, must have lived not far off the time of Homer; indeed some say that he came into the presence of Homer.  Xenophon gives an idea of his antiquity when he speaks of him as living in the time of the Herakleidae.  By descent of course the last kings of Sparta are Herakleidae, but he appears to mean by Herakleidae the earliest of all, who were next to Herakles himself.

[Footnote A:  In the Spartan constitution there were two kings, who were believed to be descended from two brothers, Eurysthenes and Prokles, the two sons of Aristodemus.  When the descendants of Herakles returned to Peloponnesus, and divided that country amongst them, Lacedaemon fell to the lot of Aristodemus, who left his two sons joint heirs to the monarchy.  The kings of Sparta had little real power, and to this no doubt they owed the fact of their retaining their dignity when every other Hellenic state adopted a democratic form of government.]

However, in spite of these discrepancies, we will endeavour, by following the least inconsistent accounts and the best known authorities, to write the history of his life.  Simonides the poet tells us that the father of Lykurgus was not Eunomus, but Prytanis.  But most writers do not deduce his genealogy thus, but say that Soues was the son of Prokles, and grandson of Aristodemus, and that Soues begat Euripus; Euripus, Prytanis, and Prytanis, Eunomus.  Eunomus had two sons, Polydektes by his first wife, and Lykurgus by his second wife Dionassa, which makes him, according to Dieutychides, sixth in descent from Prokles, and eleventh from Herakles.

II.  The most remarkable of his ancestors was Soues, in whose reign the Spartans enslaved the Helots, and annexed a large portion of Arcadia.  It is said that Soues once was besieged by the Kleitorians, in a fort where there was no water, and was compelled to conclude a treaty to restore the territory in dispute, if he and his men were permitted to drink at the nearest spring.  After this had been agreed upon, he called his men together, and offered his kingdom to any one who could refrain from drinking.  But as no one