TYRTAEUS

A celebrated Greek elegiac poet of the 7th century B.C., son of Archembrotus, born either at Athens or at Aphidna in Attica. He transplanted the Ionian elegy to Dorian Sparta. According to the ordinary story, the Spartans, being hard pressed in the second Messenian War, on the advice of the Delphic oracle, asked the Athenians for a general, and they sent them the lame Tyrtaeus. By the power of his poetry, he healed the divisions among the Spartans, and roused them to such bravery that they won the victory. His poems stood in high esteem at Sparta, and served as a means of education for the youth. In the field they were read at evening after supper. Besides fragments of an elegy entitled Eunomia (lawfulness), by means of which he put an end to the divisions subsisting among the Spartans, and an anapaeestic March, we possess three complete specimens of his war songs, called Hypothekai, or exhortations, in which he encourages young men to take to heart the duty and honour of courage. Their themes are singularly simple and pathetic, and they are among the most beautiful remains of ancient poetry.