Plutarch begins his biography of Lycurgus with the following ominous words:—

“ Concerning the lawgiver Lycurgus we can assert him? absolutely nothing which is not controverted: there are different stories in respect to his birth, his travels, his death, and also his mode of proceeding, political as well as legislative: least of all is the time in which he lived agreed upon.”

And this exordium is but too well borne out by the unsatisfactory nature of the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch himself, but in those other authors out of whom we are obliged to make up our idea of the memorable Lycurgean system. If we examine the sources from which Plutarch's life of Lycurgus is deduced, it will appear that—excepting the poets Alkman, Tyrtæus, and Simonides, from whom he has borrowed less than we could have wished—he has no authorities older than Xenophon and Plato: Aristotle is cited several times, and is unquestionably the best of his witnesses, but the greater number of them belong to the century subsequent to that philosopher. Neither Herodotus nor Ephorus are named, though the former furnishes some brief, but interesting particulars, and the latter also (as far as we can judge from the fragments remaining) entered at large into the proceedings of the Spartan lawgiver.