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Lycurgus was the son of Lycophron and grandson of the Lycurgus whom the Thirty Tyrants put to death, his execution being brought about by Aristodemus of Batê, who also, after having been one of the Hellenotamiae,The Hellenotamiae were a board of ten members who collected and administered the tribute paid to Athens by the members of the Delian Confederacy. was banished under the democracy. Lycurgus was of the deme of the Butadae and the family of the Eteobutadae. He attended the lectures of Plato the philosopher and at first devoted himself to philosophy; then, after being a pupil of the orator Isocrates, he had a notable public career both as a speaker and as a man of action, and he was also entrusted with the management of the finances of the State; for he was made treasurer for three periods of four years338-326 b.c. The title of his office is not known. No regular office so extensive as this is mentioned in Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens. He may have been in charge of the theoric fund or the military fund, or both, by virtue of a special commission, which in the next generation became a regular office; see Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, p. 10, Tarn, Cambridge Ancient History, vi. p. 441. The period meant may be the quinquennium. in charge of fourteen thousand talents, or, as some say (and among them the man who proposed the vote of honours for him,See Decree III, below, 852. Stratocles the orator), eighteen thousand, six hundred and fifty.Roughly equivalent to £3,026,000 or $15,130,000, or more at present values. He was elected in his own person the first time, but afterwards he entered the name of one of his friends, though he himself administered the office, because a law had previously been introduced forbidding anyone elected treasurer of the public funds to hold the office more than four years; and he was always intent upon the public business summer and winter. When he was elected to provide munitions of war he restored many edifices in the city, he provided four hundred triremes for the people, he constructed the gymnasium in the Lyceum and planted trees in it, he built the palaestra and finished the Dionysiac theatre when he was the commissioner in charge of that work.Probably while he was in control of the finances. Cf. Dörpfeld and Reisch, Das griechische Theater, pp. 39 f. He took care of two hundred and fifty talents entrusted to him on deposit by private persons, he provided for the city objects of gold and silver for use in processions and golden Victories, and many buildings which came into his hands half-finished he completed, among them the ship-sheds and the arsenal. And he put the foundation-walls round the Panathenaic stadium. This he accomplished, and also the levelling of the ravine, because a certain Deinias who owned this plot of land gave it to the city when Lycurgus suggested to him that he make the gift.
