He is said to
have left one son, Antiorus, who died childless, and so ended the
family. His companions and relatives and their descendants kept up the
practice of meeting together for a long period; and the days when they
met were called Lykurgids. Aristokrates the son of Hipparchus says that
when Lykurgus died in Crete, his friends burned his body and threw the
ashes into the sea, at his own request, as he feared that if any remains
of him should be brought back to Lacedaemon, they would think themselves
absolved from their oath, and change the constitution. This is the story
of Lykurgus.
LIFE OF NUMA.
I. There is a considerable conflict of opinion about the time of King
Numa's reign, although several pedigrees seem to be accurately traced to
him. One Clodius, in a book on the verification of dates, insists that
all these old records were destroyed during the Gaulish troubles, and
that those which are now extant were composed by interested persons, by
whose means men who had no right to such honours claimed descent from
the noblest families. Though Numa is said to have been a friend of
Pythagoras, yet some deny that he had any tincture of Greek learning,
arguing that either he was born with a natural capacity for sound
learning, or that he was taught by some barbarian.[A] Others say that
Pythagoras was born much later, some five generations after the times of
Numa, but that Pythagoras the Spartan, who won the Stadium race at
Olympia on the thirteenth Olympiad, wandered into Italy, and there
meeting Numa, assisted him in the establishment of his constitution; and
that from this cause, the Roman constitution in many points resembles
the Laconian.
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