Lycurgus   

There is so much uncertainty in the accounts which historians have
left us of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, that scarcely anything
is asserted by one of them which is not called into question or contradicted
by the rest. Their sentiments are quite different as to the family
he came of, the voyages he undertook, the place and manner of his
death, but most of all when they speak of the laws he made and the
commonwealth which he founded. They cannot, by any means, be brought
to an agreement as to the very age in which he lived; for some of
them say that he flourished in the time of Iphitus, and that they
two jointly contrived the ordinance for the cessation of arms during
the solemnity of the Olympic games. Of this opinion was Aristotle;
and for confirmation of it, he alleges an inscription upon one of
the copper quoits used in those sports, upon which the name of Lycurgus
continued uneffaced to his time. But Eratosthenes and Apollodorus
and other chronologers, computing the time by the successions of the
Spartan kings, pretend to demonstrate that he was much more ancient
than the institution of the Olympic games. Timaeus conjectures that
there were two of this name, and in diverse times, but that the one
of them being much more famous than the other, men gave to him the
glory of the exploits of both; the elder of the two, according to
him, was not long after Homer; and some are so particular as to say
that he had seen him. But that he was of great antiquity may be gathered
from a passage in Xenophon, where he makes him contemporary with the
Heraclidae. By descent, indeed, the very last kings of Sparta were
Heraclidae too; but he seems in that place to speak of the first and
more immediate successors of Hercules. But notwithstanding this confusion
and obscurity, we shall endeavour to compose the history of his life,
adhering to those statements which are least contradicted, and depending
upon those authors who are most worthy of credit.
The poet Simonides will have it that Lycurgus was the son of Prytanis,
and not of Eunomus; but in this opinion he is singular, for all the
rest deduce the genealogy of them both as follows:-
Aristodemus.
to
Patrocles.
to
Sous.
to
Eurypon.
to
Eunomus
/
Polydectes by his first wife. Lycurgus by Dionassa his second. Dieuchidas
says he was the sixth from Patrocles and the eleventh from Hercules.
Be this as it will, Sous certainly was the most renowned of all his
ancestors, under whose conduct the Spartans made slaves of the Helots,
and added to their dominions, by conquest, a good part of Arcadia.
There goes a story of this king Sous, that, being besieged by the
Clitorians in a dry and stony place so that he could come at no water,
he was at last constrained to agree with them upon these terms, that
he would restore to them all his conquests, provided that himself
and all his men should drink of the nearest spring. After the usual
oaths and ratifications, he called his soldiers together, and offered
to him that would forbear drinking his kingdom for a reward; and when
not a man of them was able to forbear, in short, when they had all
drunk their fill, at last comes King Sous himself to the spring, and,
having sprinkled his face only, without swallowing one drop, marches
off in the face of his enemies, refusing to yield up his conquests,
because himself and all his men had not, according to the articles,
drunk of their water.
Although he was justly had in admiration on this account, yet his
family was not surnamed from him, but from his son Eurypon (of whom
they were called Eurypontids); the reason of which was that Eurypon