Ликург – небесный покровитель Спарты
Lycurgus, the Celestial Patron of Sparta

Summary/Abstract: The ancient authors knew nothing certain about Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus save that he lost his eye (allegedly because of the opposition to his reforms). This small detail provides the best indication to the original character of Lycurgus. Greek, Indian, Iranian and other texts repeatedly mention the eye of a highest god, and there were Sumerian precedents for that. The idea of the eye of god was initially connected with the notion of the celestial pole and its symbolic representation. An important and characteristic function of the all-seeing Eye was to oversee justice and right order, just as ‘the eye of Zeus’ does in Hes. Op. 267. Spartan one-eyed Lycurgus was a god of that type. Conscious efforts of fifth century’s Spartan politicians who were able to influence contemporary poets and writers turned Lycurgus into a lawgiver of a kind of Athenian Solon.

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