InGreek mythology,Lycurgus (/laɪˈkɜːrɡəs/;Ancient Greek: ΛυκοῦργοςLykoûrgos, Ancient Greek: [lykôrɡos]; alsoLykurgos,Lykourgos) was the king of theEdoni inThrace, son ofDryas, the "oak", and father of a son whose name was also Dryas.[1]
Lycurgus banned the cult ofDionysus. When Lycurgus heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he imprisoned Dionysus's followers, theMaenads, or "chased the[m] through the holy hills ofNysa, and the sacred implements dropped to the ground from the hands of one and all, as [he] struck them down with his ox-goad".[2][3][4]
The compiler ofBibliotheke (3.5.1) says that as punishment, especially for his treatment forAmbrosia, Dionysus' nursemaid; the god drove Lycurgus insane. In his madness, Lycurgus mistook his son for a mature trunk ofivy, which is holy to Dionysus, and killed him, pruning away his nose and ears, fingers and toes. Consequently, the land of Thrace dried up in horror. Dionysus decreed that the land would stay dry and barren as long as Lycurgus was left unpunished for his injustice, so his people bound him and flung him to man-eating horses onMount Pangaeüs.[5] However, another version of the tale, transmitted inServius's commentary onAeneid 3.14,Porphyrio's commentary onHorace'sOde 2.19,[6] andHyginus in hisFabulae 132, records that Lycurgus cut off his own foot when he meant to cut down a vine of ivy. With Lycurgus dead, Dionysus lifted the curse. Also according to Hyginus, Lycurgus tried to rape his mother after imbibing wine. When he discovered what he had done, he attempted to cut down the grapevines, believing the wine to be a bad medicine. Dionysus drove him mad as a punishment, causing him to kill both his wife and his son, and threw him to the panthers on Mount Rhodope.[7]
Diodorus Siculus relates that, centuries before the Trojan war, King Lycurgus of Thrace exiled one of his commanders,Mopsus, along withSipylus theScythian. Sometime later, when the LibyanAmazons invaded Thrace, Mopsus and Sipylus came to the rescue by defeating them in a pitched battle, in which their queenMyrine was slain; the Thracians then pursued the surviving Amazons all the way toLibya.[8]
In some versions the story of Lycurgus and his punishment by Dionysus is placed inArabia rather than in Thrace. The tragedianAeschylus, in a lost play, depicted Lycurgus as a beer-drinker and hence a natural opponent of the wine god.[9][10] There is a further reference to Lycurgus inSophocles'Antigone in the Chorus's ode after Antigone is taken away (960 in the Greek text).
In Homer'sIliad, an older source than Aeschylus, Lycurgus's punishment for his disrespect towards the gods, particularly Dionysus, is blindness inflicted by Zeus followed not long after by death.[11]
According toSophocles, the frenzied Lycurgus mocked at Dionysus and as punishment was shut in "a prison of stone" until his madness went away.[12]
The author of theGeoponica states that Dionysus, fleeing from Lycurgus, tied him up with vines and dove into the sea; Lycurgus shed a tear then, which transformed intocabbage. This was supposedly why grapevines and cabbages had a mutual dislike toward one another, and could not thrive together, as vines withered in the fields whenever a cabbage was growing nearby.[13][14]
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