Tyrtaeus
Encyclopedia
Tyrtaeus was a Greek
poet
who composed verses in Sparta
around the time of the Second Messenian War
, the date of which isn't clearly establishedsometime in the latter part of the seventh century BC. He is known especially for political and military elegies
, exhorting Spartans to support the state authorities and to fight bravely against the Messenians, who had temporarily succeeded in wresting their estates from Spartan control. His verses mark a critical point in Spartan history, when Spartans began to turn from their flourishing arts and crafts and from the lighter verses of poets like Alcman
(roughly his contemporary), to embrace a regime of military austerity: "life in Sparta became spartan". Some modern scholars believe that Tyrtaeus helped to precipitate and formulate this transition but others see no real evidence for this and some even question the authenticity of his few surviving versesan origin in fifth or fourth century Athens has sometimes been suggested. Traditional accounts of his life, on which we rely for biographical details, were almost entirely deduced from his poetry or were simply fiction, as for example an account by Pausanias of his supposed transformation from a lame, stupid school teacher in Athens to the mastermind of Spartan victories against the Messenians.
has two entries for Tyrtaeus, summarizing conflicting reports that were current at that time. The first of them as follows:
The second entry states that the Spartans took him as their general from among the Athenians in response to an oracle, though he was lame.
The floruit
given in the first entry is perhaps too early since Jerome
offers a date of 633-32. Modern scholars are less specific: dates for the Second Messenian War and hence for Tyrtaeus are given as broad approximations, such as "the latter part of the 7th century" and "any time between the sixties and the thirties" of the seventh century. The claim in Suda's second entry that Tyrtaeus was a Spartan general is made also by Athenaeus
and Strabo
.
Some of the other issues raised by Suda are addressed under the following headings.
n. Ancient Athenian propaganda might also have played a role. One ancient source even listed his Athenian deme
, Aphidnae, but there was also a place of that name in Laconia. Variations on his Athenian origin and his deformity are found in numerous ancient sources, including Diogenes Laertius
, who said that the Athenians regarded him as deranged, and Porphyry
, who labelled him "one-eyed", and Justin
, who believed that he was sent to the Spartans by the Athenians as a deliberate insult. According to Pausanias, the Athenians sent the lame, mentally defective teacher/poet to Sparta as a compromise, wishing to obey the oracle, which had demanded an Athenian, but not wishing to help the Spartans in their war, which would have required a more capable individual. Even a luminary such as Plato
gave credence to the poet's Athenian origin and yet Tyrtaeus wasn't listed by Herodotus
among the two foreigners ever to have been awarded Spartan citizenship. The poet's tone of authority when addressing the Spartan warrior class, and the occasional Doric word in his vocabulary, indicate that he was in fact Laconian. However, the picture is complicated by modern doubts about the authenticity of the extant verses, some or all being dated by various scholars to the fifth or fourth century BC. A theory that 'Tyrtaeus' was in fact a fifth century Athenian was posited by Eduard Schwartz
as early as 1899.
and Cretan Thaletas
were welcome guests. Ivory and gold ornaments, bronze vessels of ornate workmanship, fine pottery and the odes of Alcman all testify to refined tastes, continuing even into the sixth century. The continuance of those luxuries was "dearly purchased" in blood and toil by Tyrtaeus's generation when the Messenians revolted, and the ensuing war and civil strife inspired his entire poetic work. The crisis was mentioned by Aristotle
for its instructive power:
Tyrtaeus in his poetry urged the Spartans to remain loyal to the state and he reminded them of a constitution based on divine providence, requiring co-operation of kings, elders and the people."After listening to Pheobus, they brought home from Pytho the god's oracles and sure predictions. The divinely honoured kings, in whose care is Sparta's lovely city, and the aged elders are to initiate counsel; and the men of the people, responding with straight utterances, are to speak fair words, act justly in everything, and not give the city (crooked?) counsel. Victory and power are to accompany the mass of the people. For so was Pheobus' revelation about this to the city."adapted into prose from Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 6, and Diodorus Siculus World History 7.12.5-6, by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 41 He sought to inspire them in battle by celebrating the example of their grandfathers' generation, when Messenia was first captured, in the rule of King Theopompus,"...our king Theopompus dear to the gods, through whom we captured spacious Messene, Messene good to plough and good to plant. For nineteen years the spearmen fathers of our fathers fought unceasingly over it, displaying steadfast courage in their hearts, and in the twentieth year the enemy fled from the high mountain range of Ithome, abandoning their rich farmlands."adapted into prose from three sources (Pausanias 4.6.5, a scholiast on Plato's Laws, Strabo 6.3.3) by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 45 and he gave practical advice on weapons, armour and tactics (see for example the verses below). Some modern scholars however think his advice shows more familiarity with the schoolroom than with the battlefield, appearing to feature obsolete armour and tactics typical of Homeric rather than hoplite
warfare. Others have argued that the Spartans at that time were still developing hoplite tactics or that they were adapting hoplite tactics to encounter Messenian guerillas.
Tyrtaeus's poetry is almost always interpreted teleologically, for signs of its subsequent impact on Spartan society. The similarities in meter and phrasing between Homeric epic and early elegy have encouraged this tendency, sometimes leading to dramatic conclusions about Tyrtaeus's significance. He has been called, for example, "...the first poet of the Greek city state" and, in a similar vein, "he has recaste the Homeric ideal of the single champion's 'arete' (excellence) into the 'arete' of the patriot". For some scholars, this is to credit Tyrtaeus with too much: his use of 'arete' was not an advance on Homer's use of it but can still be interpreted as signifying 'virtue' in the archaic sense of an individual's power to achieve something rather than as an anticipation of the classical
sense of moral excellence, familiar to Plato and others.
and attributed to Tyrtaeus by a scholiast, could have belonged to the so-called 'war songs' , of which nothing else survives. According to Philodemus
, who presented it as a little-known fact, Tyrtaeus was honoured above others because of his music, not just his verses, Pollux
stated that he introduced Spartans to three choruses based on age (boys, young and old men) and some modern scholars in fact argue that he composed his elegies in units of five couplets each, alternating between exhortation and reflection, in a kind of responsion similar to Greek choral poetry. Ancient commentators included Tyrtaeus with Archilochus
and Callinus
as the possible inventor of the elegy. In fact one fanciful explanation of his lameness is that it alludes to the elegiac couplet, one verse of which is shorter than the other.
, in the direction of lyric poetry
". Heroic hexameters were used by Homer
, whose phrases and Ionian vocabulary became the mainstay of Tyrtaeus's verse, even though that was composed for Doric-speaking Spartan audiences"...a measure of the extent to which the Ionian epics had by now created among the Greeks a cultural unity which transcended dialect and ethnic rivalry". The use of Ionian vocabulary is all the more remarkable in that Tyrtaeus gave voice to a national, military ethic peculiar to Sparta, and his verses were possibly sung at banquets on campaign and even on the march."...the Spartans themselves in their wars march in time to the poems of Tyrtaeus which they recite from memory...after the Lacedaemonians prevailed over the Messenians because of the generalship of Tyrtaeus, they established the custom in their campaigns that, after dinner and the hymn of thanksgiving, each sing in turn the poems of Tyrtaeus; their military commander acts as judge and gives a prize of meat to the winner".Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner 14.630f, translated by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), pages 33-4 However, the only verse surviving from the marching songs is in anapests, it includes Dorisms and its authenticity is doubtful"Genuine sons of Sparta bold!
Firm and full your bucklers hold:
With intrepid step advance:
Poise and point the vengeful lance.
Life despise and dare to fall:
Glory and your country call!"
Translated into heroic trochees/iambs by Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., Select Essays of Dio Chrysostom, London (1800).
The elegies, being sung at military banquets, belong to a tradition of sympotic
poetry while also being representative of the genre of martial exhortation. The adoption of language and thematic concerns from Homeric epic is characteristic of this genre. For instance, the words of Tyrtaeus 10.1-2 ("For it is a fine thing for a man having fallen nobly amid the fore-fighters to die, fighting on behalf of the fatherland") undoubtedly echo Hector's speech in 15.494-7 of Homer's Iliad.: ("And whoever hit by a missile or struck by a sword find his death and fated end, let him die. It is not unseemly for one to die protecting the land of his fathers"). It is possible that Tyrtaeus intentionally alludes to Homer in instances such as these for political reasons: given the fact that his poetry, like that of other archaic authors, was most likely performed in the context of aristocratic symposia, his references to epic heroism served to praise the elite status of his aristocratic audience.
Paraphrased so as to retain the form of an elegy:
The noble sentiment of line 1 seems to be original yet the vocabulary is entirely Homeric and, though lines 5-7 are adapted from Homer's Iliad (13.130-33),"...locking spear by spear, shield against shield at the base, so buckler/ leaned on buckler, helmet on helmet, man against man, and the horse-hair crests along the horns of their shining helmets/ touched as they bent their heads, so dense were they formed on each other,..." Iliad 13.130-33, translated by R.Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, University of Chicago Press (1951) there is an important difference: Homer describes the advance of one side in close formation, whereas Tyrtaeus describes two sides meeting in the hoplite style of fighting. The description of the battle is rejected however by some scholars as anachronistic: for example, missiles were not characteristic of hoplite warfare. The passage demonstrates one of the more common devices employed by Tyrtaeusthe use of parallel phrases for amplification, sometimes degenerating into tedious repetition. Here it is used to communicate a sense of the crowded battlefield.
(1792) and imitations by H. J. Pye, poet laureate (1795), and an Italian version by F. Cavallotti, with text, introduction and notes (1898). The fragment beginning (fr. 10 West) has been translated by Thomas Campbell, the poet. The edition by C. A. Klotz (1827) contains a dissertation on the war-songs of different countries.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who composed verses in Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
around the time of the Second Messenian War
Second Messenian War
The Second Messenian War was a war between the Ancient Greek states of Messenia and Sparta. It started around 40 years after the end of the First Messenian War with the uprising of a slave rebellion. This war lasted from 685 to 668.-Prelude:...
, the date of which isn't clearly establishedsometime in the latter part of the seventh century BC. He is known especially for political and military elegies
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
, exhorting Spartans to support the state authorities and to fight bravely against the Messenians, who had temporarily succeeded in wresting their estates from Spartan control. His verses mark a critical point in Spartan history, when Spartans began to turn from their flourishing arts and crafts and from the lighter verses of poets like Alcman
Alcman
Alcman was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets.- Family :...
(roughly his contemporary), to embrace a regime of military austerity: "life in Sparta became spartan". Some modern scholars believe that Tyrtaeus helped to precipitate and formulate this transition but others see no real evidence for this and some even question the authenticity of his few surviving versesan origin in fifth or fourth century Athens has sometimes been suggested. Traditional accounts of his life, on which we rely for biographical details, were almost entirely deduced from his poetry or were simply fiction, as for example an account by Pausanias of his supposed transformation from a lame, stupid school teacher in Athens to the mastermind of Spartan victories against the Messenians.
Life
The Byzantine encyclopaedia SudaSuda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...
has two entries for Tyrtaeus, summarizing conflicting reports that were current at that time. The first of them as follows:
The second entry states that the Spartans took him as their general from among the Athenians in response to an oracle, though he was lame.
The floruit
Floruit
Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...
given in the first entry is perhaps too early since Jerome
Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
offers a date of 633-32. Modern scholars are less specific: dates for the Second Messenian War and hence for Tyrtaeus are given as broad approximations, such as "the latter part of the 7th century" and "any time between the sixties and the thirties" of the seventh century. The claim in Suda's second entry that Tyrtaeus was a Spartan general is made also by Athenaeus
Athenaeus
Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...
and Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
.
Some of the other issues raised by Suda are addressed under the following headings.
His place of origin
Confusion about his place of origin could have had several causes. It might have been due to ancient assumptions that Sparta was too 'spartan' ever to have produced a talented poet of its own, or because Tyrtaeus didn't compose in the Doric dialect or vernacular of Sparta (unlike his near contemporary, Alcman) but imitated the conventional literary dialect of Homer, which was IoniaIonia
Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...
n. Ancient Athenian propaganda might also have played a role. One ancient source even listed his Athenian deme
Deme
In Ancient Greece, a deme or demos was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Athens. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in...
, Aphidnae, but there was also a place of that name in Laconia. Variations on his Athenian origin and his deformity are found in numerous ancient sources, including Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...
, who said that the Athenians regarded him as deranged, and Porphyry
Porphyry
Porphyry may refer to:* Porphyry , an igneous rock with large crystals in a fine-grained matrix, or associated mineral deposit** Porphyry copper deposit, a primary ore deposit of copper, consisting of porphyry rocks...
, who labelled him "one-eyed", and Justin
Junianus Justinus
Justin was a Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire. His name is mentioned only in the title of his own history, and there it is in the genitive, which would be M. Juniani Justini no matter which nomen he bore.Of his personal history nothing is known...
, who believed that he was sent to the Spartans by the Athenians as a deliberate insult. According to Pausanias, the Athenians sent the lame, mentally defective teacher/poet to Sparta as a compromise, wishing to obey the oracle, which had demanded an Athenian, but not wishing to help the Spartans in their war, which would have required a more capable individual. Even a luminary such as Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
gave credence to the poet's Athenian origin and yet Tyrtaeus wasn't listed by Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
among the two foreigners ever to have been awarded Spartan citizenship. The poet's tone of authority when addressing the Spartan warrior class, and the occasional Doric word in his vocabulary, indicate that he was in fact Laconian. However, the picture is complicated by modern doubts about the authenticity of the extant verses, some or all being dated by various scholars to the fifth or fourth century BC. A theory that 'Tyrtaeus' was in fact a fifth century Athenian was posited by Eduard Schwartz
Eduard Schwartz
Eduard Schwartz was a German classical philologist.Born in Kiel, he studied under Hermann Usener, Mommsen and Wilamovitz-Moellendorf. Schwartz taught in at least half a dozen universities culminating with a post in Munich. He published numerous articles and works in the area of Greek and Roman...
as early as 1899.
His Sparta
However his Sparta wasn't that Spartan. The conquest of Messenia in the eighth century, by the grandfathers of Tyrtaeus's generation, provided the foundation for a sophisticated and cultivated lifestyle. Foreign poets like the Lesbian TerpanderTerpander
Terpander , of Antissa in Lesbos, was a Greek poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC.About the time of the Second Messenian War, he settled in Sparta, whither, according to some accounts, he had been summoned by command of the Delphic Oracle, to compose the...
and Cretan Thaletas
Thaletas
Thaletas or Thales of Crete was an early Greek musician and lyric poet.The position of Thaletas is one of the most interesting, and at the same time most difficult points, in that most interesting and difficult subject, the early history of Greek music and lyric poetry...
were welcome guests. Ivory and gold ornaments, bronze vessels of ornate workmanship, fine pottery and the odes of Alcman all testify to refined tastes, continuing even into the sixth century. The continuance of those luxuries was "dearly purchased" in blood and toil by Tyrtaeus's generation when the Messenians revolted, and the ensuing war and civil strife inspired his entire poetic work. The crisis was mentioned by Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
for its instructive power:
Tyrtaeus in his poetry urged the Spartans to remain loyal to the state and he reminded them of a constitution based on divine providence, requiring co-operation of kings, elders and the people."After listening to Pheobus, they brought home from Pytho the god's oracles and sure predictions. The divinely honoured kings, in whose care is Sparta's lovely city, and the aged elders are to initiate counsel; and the men of the people, responding with straight utterances, are to speak fair words, act justly in everything, and not give the city (crooked?) counsel. Victory and power are to accompany the mass of the people. For so was Pheobus' revelation about this to the city."adapted into prose from Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 6, and Diodorus Siculus World History 7.12.5-6, by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 41 He sought to inspire them in battle by celebrating the example of their grandfathers' generation, when Messenia was first captured, in the rule of King Theopompus,"...our king Theopompus dear to the gods, through whom we captured spacious Messene, Messene good to plough and good to plant. For nineteen years the spearmen fathers of our fathers fought unceasingly over it, displaying steadfast courage in their hearts, and in the twentieth year the enemy fled from the high mountain range of Ithome, abandoning their rich farmlands."adapted into prose from three sources (Pausanias 4.6.5, a scholiast on Plato's Laws, Strabo 6.3.3) by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 45 and he gave practical advice on weapons, armour and tactics (see for example the verses below). Some modern scholars however think his advice shows more familiarity with the schoolroom than with the battlefield, appearing to feature obsolete armour and tactics typical of Homeric rather than hoplite
Hoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
warfare. Others have argued that the Spartans at that time were still developing hoplite tactics or that they were adapting hoplite tactics to encounter Messenian guerillas.
Tyrtaeus's poetry is almost always interpreted teleologically, for signs of its subsequent impact on Spartan society. The similarities in meter and phrasing between Homeric epic and early elegy have encouraged this tendency, sometimes leading to dramatic conclusions about Tyrtaeus's significance. He has been called, for example, "...the first poet of the Greek city state" and, in a similar vein, "he has recaste the Homeric ideal of the single champion's 'arete' (excellence) into the 'arete' of the patriot". For some scholars, this is to credit Tyrtaeus with too much: his use of 'arete' was not an advance on Homer's use of it but can still be interpreted as signifying 'virtue' in the archaic sense of an individual's power to achieve something rather than as an anticipation of the classical
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
sense of moral excellence, familiar to Plato and others.
His work
The constitution mentioned by Suda seems to be the Eunomia mentioned by Aristotle. Surviving only in a few fragments, it seems to have emphasized the role of divine providence in the development of the state and of its government. Eventually the Spartans emerged from the Second Messenian War with their constitution intact, either because victory made change unnecessary or because "religious propaganda" of the kind promoted by Tyrtaeus stemmed the pressure for change. According to Suda, both his 'constitution' and his 'precepts' were composed in elegiac couplets, but Pausanias also mentions 'anapests', a few lines of which, quoted by Dio ChrysostomDio Chrysostom
Dio Chrysostom , Dion of Prusa or Dio Cocceianus was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century. Eighty of his Discourses are extant, as well as a few Letters and a funny mock essay In Praise of Hair, as well as a few other fragments...
and attributed to Tyrtaeus by a scholiast, could have belonged to the so-called 'war songs' , of which nothing else survives. According to Philodemus
Philodemus
Philodemus of Gadara was an Epicurean philosopher and poet. He studied under Zeno of Sidon in Athens, before moving to Rome, and then to Herculaneum. He was once known chiefly for his poetry preserved in the Greek anthology, but since the 18th century, many writings of his have been discovered...
, who presented it as a little-known fact, Tyrtaeus was honoured above others because of his music, not just his verses, Pollux
Pollux
Pollux may refer to:Astronomy*Pollux , *Pollux, a crater on the Saturnian moon EpimetheusFictional characters*Pollux Black, a pureblood wizard, grandfather of Sirius Black in the Harry Potter universeGames...
stated that he introduced Spartans to three choruses based on age (boys, young and old men) and some modern scholars in fact argue that he composed his elegies in units of five couplets each, alternating between exhortation and reflection, in a kind of responsion similar to Greek choral poetry. Ancient commentators included Tyrtaeus with Archilochus
Archilochus
Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
and Callinus
Callinus
Callinus was a poet who lived in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus in Asia Minor in the mid-7th century BC. He is the earliest known Greek elegiac poet. Very little is known about his life....
as the possible inventor of the elegy. In fact one fanciful explanation of his lameness is that it alludes to the elegiac couplet, one verse of which is shorter than the other.
Poetry
Tyrtaeus was predominantly an elegiac poet and elegy may be described as "a variation upon the heroic hexameterHexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
, in the direction of lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
". Heroic hexameters were used by Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, whose phrases and Ionian vocabulary became the mainstay of Tyrtaeus's verse, even though that was composed for Doric-speaking Spartan audiences"...a measure of the extent to which the Ionian epics had by now created among the Greeks a cultural unity which transcended dialect and ethnic rivalry". The use of Ionian vocabulary is all the more remarkable in that Tyrtaeus gave voice to a national, military ethic peculiar to Sparta, and his verses were possibly sung at banquets on campaign and even on the march."...the Spartans themselves in their wars march in time to the poems of Tyrtaeus which they recite from memory...after the Lacedaemonians prevailed over the Messenians because of the generalship of Tyrtaeus, they established the custom in their campaigns that, after dinner and the hymn of thanksgiving, each sing in turn the poems of Tyrtaeus; their military commander acts as judge and gives a prize of meat to the winner".Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner 14.630f, translated by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), pages 33-4 However, the only verse surviving from the marching songs is in anapests, it includes Dorisms and its authenticity is doubtful"Genuine sons of Sparta bold!
Firm and full your bucklers hold:
With intrepid step advance:
Poise and point the vengeful lance.
Life despise and dare to fall:
Glory and your country call!"
Translated into heroic trochees/iambs by Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., Select Essays of Dio Chrysostom, London (1800).
The elegies, being sung at military banquets, belong to a tradition of sympotic
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
poetry while also being representative of the genre of martial exhortation. The adoption of language and thematic concerns from Homeric epic is characteristic of this genre. For instance, the words of Tyrtaeus 10.1-2 ("For it is a fine thing for a man having fallen nobly amid the fore-fighters to die, fighting on behalf of the fatherland") undoubtedly echo Hector's speech in 15.494-7 of Homer's Iliad.: ("And whoever hit by a missile or struck by a sword find his death and fated end, let him die. It is not unseemly for one to die protecting the land of his fathers"). It is possible that Tyrtaeus intentionally alludes to Homer in instances such as these for political reasons: given the fact that his poetry, like that of other archaic authors, was most likely performed in the context of aristocratic symposia, his references to epic heroism served to praise the elite status of his aristocratic audience.
Poetic style
The three longest fragments of surviving verse (fr. 10-12) are complete or virtually complete poems describing the ideal warrior and the disgrace or glory that attends his personal choices. Their poetic quality is uneven, they include some arresting imagery and there are some clumsy transitions, repetitions and padding. The following lines belong to one of these (fr. 11, lines 27-34, here referred to as lines 1-8) and they give a compelling picture of battle between hoplite forces.Paraphrased so as to retain the form of an elegy:
-
- Let a man learn how to fight by first daring to perform mighty deeds,
- Not where the missiles won't reach, if he is armed with a shield,
- But getting in close where fighting is hand to hand, inflicting a wound
- With his long spear or his sword, taking the enemy's life,
- With his foot planted alongside a foot and his shield pressed against shield,
- And his crest up against crest and his helm up against helm
- And breast against breast, embroiled in the actionlet him fight man to man,
- Holding secure in his grasp haft of his sword or his spear!
- Let a man learn how to fight by first daring to perform mighty deeds,
The noble sentiment of line 1 seems to be original yet the vocabulary is entirely Homeric and, though lines 5-7 are adapted from Homer's Iliad (13.130-33),"...locking spear by spear, shield against shield at the base, so buckler/ leaned on buckler, helmet on helmet, man against man, and the horse-hair crests along the horns of their shining helmets/ touched as they bent their heads, so dense were they formed on each other,..." Iliad 13.130-33, translated by R.Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, University of Chicago Press (1951) there is an important difference: Homer describes the advance of one side in close formation, whereas Tyrtaeus describes two sides meeting in the hoplite style of fighting. The description of the battle is rejected however by some scholars as anachronistic: for example, missiles were not characteristic of hoplite warfare. The passage demonstrates one of the more common devices employed by Tyrtaeusthe use of parallel phrases for amplification, sometimes degenerating into tedious repetition. Here it is used to communicate a sense of the crowded battlefield.
Literature
There are English verse translations by Richard PolwheleRichard Polwhele
Richard Polwhele was a Cornish clergyman, poet and topographer.-Biography:Born at Truro, Cornwall, Polwhele met literary luminaries Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More at an early age. He was educated at Truro Grammar School, where he precociously published The Fate of Llewellyn...
(1792) and imitations by H. J. Pye, poet laureate (1795), and an Italian version by F. Cavallotti, with text, introduction and notes (1898). The fragment beginning (fr. 10 West) has been translated by Thomas Campbell, the poet. The edition by C. A. Klotz (1827) contains a dissertation on the war-songs of different countries.
Trivia
- The German poet and soldier Theodor KörnerTheodor Körner (author)Karl Theodor Körner was a German poet and soldier. After some time in Vienna, where he wrote some light comedies and other works, he became a soldier and joined the German uprising against Napoleon...
was known as the “German Tyrtaeus.”