Lycurgus reads from his treatise on the benefits of education
Date
1596Period
16th centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
Lycurgus, the famous Spartan lawgiver, stands in the foreground on the right and reads from a book. A market square with spectators can be seen in the background. Two dogs are let loose in the market square. One dog eats from a bowl of food prepared for them, the other dog runs after a released hare. The performance depicts a…
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Lycurgus, the famous Spartan lawgiver, stands in the foreground on the right and reads from a book. A market square with spectators can be seen in the background. Two dogs are let loose in the market square. One dog eats from a bowl of food prepared for them, the other dog runs after a released hare. The performance depicts a parable of Lycurgus. The lawgiver wanted to demonstrate the importance of education and trained two dogs from the same litter differently. One dog had to hunt for its food, while the other dog was always fed. When he released the two dogs in the forum of Sparta, the dogs behaved according to their upbringing. The parable appears in Plutarchus' Moralia (3:16). The print has a Latin text in the margin with explanations.
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