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Fifteen speeches of the orator are current.Of these only the speech against Leocrates has come down to us. He was crowned by the people many times and was honoured with statues. A bronze statueThe inscription on the base of this statue is probably preserved in I.G. ii.² 3776. Another statue stood not far from the Prytaneium; Cf. Pausanius, i. 8. 2. of him stands in the Cerameicus, set up in accordance with a decree passed in the archonship of Anaxicrates,307-306 b.c. See the Decree below, 851 ff. in which year Lycurgus and his eldest descendant were granted maintenance in the Prytaneum by the same decree. After Lycurgus died his eldest son, Lycophron, brought a suit for the grant. Lycurgus spoke also many times on religious matters, bringing suit against Autolycus the Areopagite, Lysicles the general, Demades the son of Demeas, Menesaechmus, and many others, and he caused them all to be convicted. He also brought Diphilus to trial, who removed from the silver mines the rock props which supported the weight above and made himself rich from them contrary to the law; and though the penalty for this was death, Lycurgus brought about his conviction, and from the confiscated estate distributed fifty drachmas to every citizen, since the total sum collected was one hundred and sixty talents or, as some say, he distributed a mina to each citizen.The drachma was worth, in silver, about 9d. or 18 cents, the mina 100 drachmas, the talent 60 minas. The sums mentioned are therefore roughly equivalent to £1: 16s. ($9), £40,960 ($172,800), and £3: 12 s. ($18), but the fluctuations in the value of modern currencies render such calculations very inexact. See Decree III. below, 851 f-852 e. He it was who called Aristogeiton, Leocrates, and Autolycus to account for cowardice. Lycurgus was nicknamed Ibis, An ibis for Lycurgus, for Chaerephon a bat.Aristophanes, Birds, 1296 and scholium. But it was the grandfather of the orator and statesman to whom Aristophanes referred. His family was derived ultimately from Erechtheus, the son of Gaea and Poseidon, but in the nearest generations from Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people honoured with funerals at the public expense; and this succession from father to son of those of the family who have been priests of Poseidon exists on a complete tablet which has been set up in the Erechtheum, painted by Ismenias the Chalcidian; and there are wooden statues of Lycurgus and his sons Habron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron, made by Timarchus and Cephisodotus, the sons of Praxiteles. But the tablet was put up by his son Habron, who received the priesthood by inheritance and handed it over to his brother Lycophron; and that is why Habron is represented as handing Lycophron the trident. And Lycurgus had a record made of all his acts as a public official and set it up on a tablet, for all men to see who wished, in front of the palaestra that he had built; no one, however, could convict him of embezzlement. He made the motion to crown Neoptolemus the son of Anticles and to set up a statue of him because he had promised to gild the altar of ApolloThis altar may have stood in front of the temple of Apollo Patroüs; Cf. Judeich, Topographie von Athen ², p. 345, n. 4. in the Market-place in accordance with the God’s prophecy. He also moved a decree granting honours to Diotimus, son of Diopeithes, of the deme Euonymus, in the archonship of Ctesicles.334-333 b.c.
