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He also introduced laws: the law relating to comic actors, that a competitive performance be held on the festival of PotsThe third day of the Anthesteria, the thirteenth day of the month Anthesterium. and that the victor’s name be inscribed as eligible for the City Dionysia,The τραγῳδοὶ and κωμῳδοὶ alone were eligible to be chosen by lot as protagonists for the tragedies and comedies to be presented at the City Dionysia, the subordinate roles being assigned to plain ὑποκριταί. Prior to the passage of the law of Lycurgus those only were eligible who had previously won a victory at the City Dionysia. The effect of the law of Lycurgus was, therefore, to increase the number of thos efrom whom the archon could choose a κωμῳδός for each of the five comedies to be presented. See Rohde, Rheinisches Museum, xxxviii. p. 276, and J. B. O’Connor, Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting, pp. 57 ff. which had not been permitted before, and thus he revived a contest which had fallen out of use; the law that bronze statues of the poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides be erected, that their tragedies be written out and kept in a public depository, and that the clerk of the State read them to the actors who were to perform their plays for comparison of the texts and that it be unlawful to depart from the authorized text in acting; a third law that no Athenian or foreign resident of Athens should be permitted to buy from among captives a person of free birth to be a slave without the consent of his former masterPrisoners of war were usually auctioned off into slavery regardless of their previous condition. If such a captive could prove his free birth through the testimony of the man who owned him when taken captive, he could not under this new law be purchased by any Athenian for slavery, cf. M. H. E., Meier, Comment. de vita Lycurgi, xxxix. ff.; furthermore, that a festival of Poseidon should be held in Peiraeus, consisting of no fewer than three cyclic choruses, that not less than ten minas be given to the victors, eight to those ranked second by the judges, and six to those ranked third; furthermore, that no woman should go to EleusisThis refers to the great annual procession to Eleusis in the celebration of the mysteries of Demeter and Persephonê. in a carriage, lest the women of the people appear inferior to the rich, and if any woman should be caught doing this, she should pay a fine of six thousand drachmas. His own wife disobeyed, the informers caught her in the act, and he gave them a talent; and at a later time, wrhen accused of this in the popular assembly, he said, At any rate I am found to have been the giver, not the receiver. The story may well be apocryphal. The saying of Lycurgus, repeated by Plutarch in his Comp. of Nicias and Crassus, 3, is not there connected with the Eleusis incident; and Aelian, Var. Hist. xiii. 24, expressly states that the statesman’s wife paid a fine after legal condemnation, not a bribe to the informer. And once when a taxcollector laid hands on Xenocrates the philosopher and Lycurgus met him as he was leading him away to enforce payment of his tax as a resident alien,The tax was twelve drachmas. he brought his walking-stick down on the tax-collector’s head, set Xenocrates free, and shut the other man up in prison for improper conduct. As he was generally commended for his act, Xenocrates, happening to meet Lycurgus’s children some days later, said I have repaid your father quickly for the favour he did me, boys; for he is widely commended for coming to my assistance.
