Lycurgus of Thrace- Greek FigureMortal"King of the Edoni"

The King Who Defied Dionysus

Lycurgus ruled the Edoni, a Thracian tribe dwelling near the banks of the Strymon. When the young god Dionysus first brought his ecstatic worship into Thrace, Lycurgus met him with violence. Homer tells the story in the Iliad: Diomedes recounts it to Glaucus as proof that even mighty Lycurgus, son of Dryas, did not endure long after striving against the heavenly ones.

The Attack on Mount Nyseion

On the sacred mountain of Nyseion, Lycurgus fell upon Dionysus and his nurses, driving them with an ox-goad, the iron-tipped prod used for cattle. The nurses dropped their sacred implements and fled. Dionysus himself, still young, was so terrified that he plunged into the sea, where the Nereid Thetis received him in her arms and sheltered him in her underwater grotto.

Divine Retribution

The punishment came swiftly. In Homer's account, Zeus himself struck Lycurgus blind, and he did not live long afterward, for he was hated by all the immortal gods. Apollodorus tells that Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad: in his delirium the king seized an axe and attacked what he believed was a grapevine, only to discover he had hacked his own son Dryas to pieces and mutilated his own limbs. A curse fell on the land. Nothing grew. An oracle declared the earth would not bear fruit until Lycurgus was punished, and so the Edoni bound their king and led him to Mount Pangaeum, where wild horses tore him apart at the god's command.