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Tyrtaeus (also Tyrtaios, Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) was a Greek
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 elegiac poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 who lived at Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
 about the middle of the 7th century BC.

According to the older tradition he was a native of the Attic deme of Aphidnae, and was invited to Sparta at the suggestion of the Delphic oracle to assist the Spartans in the Second Messenian War
Messenian Wars

The first two Messenian Wars were wars between Messenia and Sparta in the 8th century BC and 7th century BC centuries BC.*First Messenian War...
. According to a later version, he was a lame schoolmaster, sent by the Athenians
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 as likely to be of the least assistance to the Spartans (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....
 iii.






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Tyrtaeus (also Tyrtaios, Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) was a Greek
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 elegiac poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 who lived at Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
 about the middle of the 7th century BC.

According to the older tradition he was a native of the Attic deme of Aphidnae, and was invited to Sparta at the suggestion of the Delphic oracle to assist the Spartans in the Second Messenian War
Messenian Wars

The first two Messenian Wars were wars between Messenia and Sparta in the 8th century BC and 7th century BC centuries BC.*First Messenian War...
. According to a later version, he was a lame schoolmaster, sent by the Athenians
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 as likely to be of the least assistance to the Spartans (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....
 iii. 5; Themistius
Themistius

Themistius , named , was a statesman, rhetorician and philosopher,...
, Orat. xv. 242; Diod. Sic.
Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
 xv. 67).

A fanciful explanation of his lameness is that it alludes to the elegiac couplet, one verse of which is shorter than the other. According to Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
 (Laws, p. 629 A), the citizenship of Sparta was conferred upon Tyrtaeus, although Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
 (ix. 35) makes no mention of him among the foreigners so honoured. Basing his inference on the ground that Tyrtaeus speaks of himself as a citizen of Sparta (Fr. 2), Strabo
Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
 (viii. 362) is inclined to reject the story of his Athenian origin. The Suda
Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine Empire Medieval Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world. It is an Encyclopedia lexicon with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers....
 speaks of him as "Laconia
Laconia

Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is a prefecture in Greece. Laconia has the legal status of a Prefectures of Greece, with Sparti its administrative capital....
n or Milesian"; possibly he visited Miletus
Miletus

Miletus was an ancient city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria. Evidence of first settlement at the site has been made inaccessible by the rise of sea level and deposition of sediments from the Maeander....
 in his youth, where he became familiar with the Ionic elegy.

Georg Busolt, who suggests that Tyrtaeus was a native of Aphidnae in Laconia
Laconia

Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is a prefecture in Greece. Laconia has the legal status of a Prefectures of Greece, with Sparti its administrative capital....
, conjectures that the entire legend may have been concocted in connection with the expedition sent to the assistance of Sparta in her struggle with the revolted Helots at Ithome
Ithome

Mount Ithome is mountain in Messenia, Greece that rises to about 800 m. As the most defensible point in the territory, it was the center of Messenian resistance during the Messenian Wars in the 6th century BC....
 (464). However this may be, it is generally admitted that Tyrtaeus flourished during the second Messenian war (c. 650 BC)--a period of remarkable musical and poetical activity at Sparta, when poets like Terpander
Terpander

Terpander , of Antissa in Lesbos Island, was a Ancient Greece poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC.About the time of the Messenian Wars, he settled in Sparta, whither, according to some accounts, he had been summoned by command of the Delphic Oracle, to compose the differences which had arisen between diff...
 and Thaletas were welcomed--that he not only wrote poetry but served in the field, and that he endeavoured to compose the internal dissensions of Sparta (Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, Politics, v. 6) by inspiring the citizens with a patriotic love for their fatherland.

About twelve fragments (three of them complete poems) are preserved in Strabo, Lycurgus
Lycurgus

Lycurgus or Lykurgus may refer to:* People:** Lycurgus of Sparta , ruler** Lycurgus of Athens , activist & government administrator...
, Stobaeus
Stobaeus

Joannes Stobaeus , so called from his native place Stobi in North Macedonia , was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greece authors....
 and others. They are mainly elegiac and in the Ionic
Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the Attic-Ionic dialectal group of Ancient Greek .Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C....
 dialect, written partly in praise of the Spartan constitution and King Theopompus
Theopompus

Theopompus, a Greece historian and rhetorician, was born on Chios about 380 BC.In early youth he seems to have spent some time at Athens, along with his father, who had been exiled on account of his Laconian sympathies....
 , partly to stimulate this Spartan soldiers to deeds of heroism in the field (—the title is, however, later than Tyrtaeus). The interest of the fragments preserved from the is mainly historical, and connected with the first Messenian war
Messenian Wars

The first two Messenian Wars were wars between Messenia and Sparta in the 8th century BC and 7th century BC centuries BC.*First Messenian War...
. The ?p????a?, which are of considerable merit, contain exhortations to bravery and a warning against the disgrace of cowardice. The popularity of these elegies in the Spartan army was such that, according to Athenaeus
Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greeks rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The Suda only tells us that he lived in the times of Marcus ; but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus shows that he survived that emperor....
 (xiv. 630 F), it became the custom for the soldiers to sing them round the camp fires at night, the polemarch rewarding the best singer with a piece of flesh. Of the marching songs (?µßat???a), written in the anapaestic measure and the Doric dialect, only scanty fragments remain (Lycurgus, In Leocratem 107'; Pausanias iv. 14, 5. 15, 2).

Verrall
Arthur Woollgar Verrall

Arthur Woolgar Verrall was a classics scholar associated with Trinity College, Cambridge, Cambridge, and the first occupant of the King Edward VII Chair of English....
 (Classical Review, July 1896, May 1897) definitely places the lifetime of Tyrtaeus in the middle of the 5th century BC, while Schwartz (Hermes, 1899, xxxiv.) disputes the existence of the poet altogether; see also Macan in Classical Review (February 1897); H. Weil, Etudes sur l'antiquité grecque (1900), and C. Giarratani, Tirteo e i suoi carmi (1905). There are English verse translations by R. Polwhele (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
Thomas Campbell

Thomas Campbell was a Scotland poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing specially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London....
, the poet. The edition by C. A. Klotz (1827) contains a dissertation on the war-songs of different countries.

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