Modern writers have doubted his existence, but without sufficient reason:--such assaults on our belief are but the amusements of skepticism.

All the popular accounts of Lycurgus agree in this-- that he was the uncle of the king (Charilaus, an infant), and held the rank of protector--that unable successfully to confront a powerful faction raised against him, he left Sparta and travelled into Crete, where all the ancient Doric laws and manners were yet preserved, vigorous and unadulterated.

There studying the institutions of Minos, he beheld the model for those of Sparta.

Thence he is said to have passed into Asia Minor, and to have been the first who collected and transported to Greece the poems of Homer [127], hitherto only partially known in that country.

According to some writers, he travelled also into Egypt; and could we credit one authority, which does not satisfy even the credulous Plutarch, he penetrated into Spain and Libya, and held converse with the Gymnosophists of India.
Returned to Sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state in disorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no laws were written.