Lycurgus, the legislator of Sparta, who lived in the 9th century B.C.; in the interest of it as king visited the wise in other lands, and returned with the wise lessons he had learned from them to frame a code of laws for his country, which was fast lapsing into a state of anarchy; when he had finished his work under the sanction of the oracle at Delphi he set put again on a journey to other lands, but previously took oath of the citizens that they would observe his laws till his return; it was his purpose not to return, and he never did, in order to bind his countrymen to maintain the constitution he gave them inviolate for ever.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Lycidas * Lydgate, John