Lycurgus

Where was Lycurgus from?

In most accounts, Lycurgus was a king of Thrace, a wild region northeast of the Greek peninsula. More specifically, a few authorities made him king of the Thracian Edonians. However, some sources connected Lycurgus with Syria, possibly even identifying him with a local Arabian god.

How was Lycurgus punished?

Lycurgus was punished by the gods for opposing Dionysus and committing violence against him and his followers. Though there were different versions of this punishment, it usually involved some element of madness.

According to one account, for example, Lycurgus was driven so mad that he killed his own son; in another, he killed his wife as well as his son before chopping off his own legs with an ax. Lycurgus’ punishment ended in his death (though one source asserts that he continued to be punished in the Underworld).

Lycurgus and Dionysus

Lycurgus was one of several mortals who famously (and foolishly) attacked Dionysus and his cult. According to most accounts, Lycurgus pursued the god and his followers with an ax and ox-goad (a type of cattle prod), causing them to flee in terror. Dionysus himself only managed to escape by jumping into the sea.

Lycurgus, like other mythical sinners, was severely punished for his impious behavior. In one early source, it was Zeus who punished Lycurgus, but most later sources claimed that Dionysus returned to bring about the downfall of the man who had dared to defy him.

Origins

Scholars have long debated the origins of the Lycurgus myth. In most ancient texts, the myth is set in Thrace, leading many authorities to argue that this is where Lycurgus originated.^[16]

But other scholars have interpreted Lycurgus as a figure of Syrian extraction, pointing to the fact that some sources depict him as a Syrian king. There is also epigraphic evidence linking Lycurgus with an Arabian deity worshipped in Syria.^[17]

Like other opponents of the cult of Dionysus (including the mythical Pentheus), Lycurgus has been interpreted by modern scholars as a manifestation of the tension between divine madness and human order. This tension was central to the mythology and worship of Dionysus.^[18]

Lycurgus’ Attack on Dionysus

At the heart of Lycurgus’ myth is his ill-advised attack on Dionysus, and on the god’s domain of wine. Ancient sources report several different versions of Lycurgus’ crime:

1. In an early version of the myth that goes back to Homer, Lycurgus attacked Dionysus and his nurses, either by himself or at the head of an army. Wielding an ox-goad, he pursued the group across Nysa. Dionysus only managed to escape by diving into the sea and seeking refuge with the Nereid Thetis. In some accounts, the god’s nurses were rescued by Zeus, who turned them into stars.^[19]

2. In what became the most common version of the myth (popularized by the tragedian Aeschylus in his Lycurgea tetralogy, now lost), Lycurgus’ attack upon the entourage of Dionysus was concentrated on the god’s frenzied female worshippers, known as the Bacchae.^[20]

3. In later versions, Lycurgus’ attack on Dionysus and his followers culminated in Lycurgus taking up an ax and chopping down Dionysus’ vines.^[21]

4. Some texts connected Lycurgus’ attack on Dionysus with the nymph Ambrosia, one of Dionysus’ nurses. Confronted by Lycurgus, Ambrosia prayed to the earth goddess Gaia, who took pity on her and transformed her into a vine whose tendrils restrained her attacker.^[22]

Lycurgus’ Punishment

Just as there were different versions of Lycurgus’ attack on Dionysus and his followers, there were also different versions of his punishment. According to most accounts, Dionysus punished Lycurgus himself with some form of madness, though in early traditions it was Zeus who punished him. Some sources even claimed that Lycurgus’ punishment was delegated to a minor deity.^[23]

1. In the earliest version, transmitted by Homer, Zeus punished Lycurgus by striking him blind. The sinful king died shortly thereafter.^[24]

2. In other versions, Dionysus took matters into his own hands by driving Lycurgus mad. In this frenzied state, Lycurgus killed his son Dryas, mistaking him for the grapevines he despised so much. Afterwards, the Edonians, at Dionysus’ prompting, put their king to death by restraining him and leaving him on Mount Pangaeum to be devoured by wild horses.^[25]

In some accounts, the maddened Lycurgus also killed his wife and tried to rape his mother before chopping off his own legs, which he mistook for vines (after which he was devoured not by the horses of Mount Pangaeum but by the panthers of Rhodope).^[26]

3. In one tradition, the mad Lycurgus was imprisoned in a cave until his madness subsided.^[27]

4. In another version, Lycurgus’ divinely inflicted madness caused him to kill himself.^[28]

5. In what appears to have been a later development, Lycurgus was bound in vines and suffocated.^[29] Nonnus, elaborating on this version in his epic Dionysiaca, added that the vines that suffocated Lycurgus were none other than the tendrils of the metamorphosed Ambrosia, one of the nurses of Dionysus whom Lycurgus had attacked. 

6. Nonnus’ Lycurgus eventually escaped these vines with the help of Hera, though Zeus still saw to it that he was banished and wandered the world mad and blind (before becoming a god after his death).^[30]

According to an anonymous hymn composed around the third century CE, Lycurgus was sentenced to eternal torment in the Underworld after his death, “drawing water into a broken pitcher”^[31] whose stream poured out endlessly into the realm of Hades.