home, his tomb was struck by lightning.  This distinction befell scarcely any other man of note except Euripides, who died long after him, and was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia.  It was considered a great proof and token of his fame by the admirers of Euripides, that this should happen to him after his death which happened before to the especial favourite of Heaven.  Some say that Lykurgus died at Kirrha, but Apollothemis says that he was taken to Elis and died there, and Timaeus and Aristoxenus say that he ended his days in Crete.  Aristoxenus even says that the Cretans show his tomb in what is called the Strangers’ Road in Pergamia.  He is said to have left one son, Antiorus, who died childless, and so ended the family.  His companions and relatives and their descendants kept up the practice of meeting together for a long period; and the days when they met were called Lykurgids.  Aristokrates the son of Hipparchus says that when Lykurgus died in Crete, his friends burned his body and threw the ashes into the sea, at his own request, as he feared that if any remains of him should be brought back to Lacedaemon, they would think themselves absolved from their oath, and change the constitution.  This is the story of Lykurgus.

LIFE OF NUMA.

I. There is a considerable conflict of opinion about the time of King Numa’s reign, although several pedigrees seem to be accurately traced to him.  One Clodius, in a book on the verification of dates, insists that all these old records were destroyed during the Gaulish troubles, and that those which are now extant were composed by interested persons, by whose means men who had no right to such honours claimed descent from the noblest families.  Though Numa is said to have been a friend of Pythagoras, yet some deny that he had any tincture of Greek learning, arguing that either he was born with a natural capacity for sound learning, or that he was taught by some barbarian.[A] Others say that Pythagoras was born much later, some five generations after the times of Numa, but that Pythagoras the Spartan, who won the Stadium race at Olympia on the thirteenth Olympiad, wandered into Italy, and there meeting Numa, assisted him in the establishment of his constitution; and that from this cause, the Roman constitution in many points resembles the Laconian.  The Olympic games were instituted in the third year of Numa’s reign.  Another story is that Numa was a Sabine by birth, and the Sabines consider themselves to be of Lacedaemonian origin.  It is hard to reconcile the dates, especially those which refer to Olympiads, the table of which is said to have been made out by Hippias of Elis, on no trustworthy basis.  However, what things I have heard about Numa that are worthy of mention I shall proceed to relate, beginning from a starting-point of my own.

[Footnote A:  That is, by some one who was not a Greek.]