Tyrtaeus

Virtually all we know about the life of Tyrtaeus is found two entries of the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedia redacted in the 10th century AD.[2] Traditional accounts of his life were almost entirely deduced from his poetry or were simply fiction,[3] such as the account by Pausanias of his supposed transformation from a lame and stupid school teacher in Athens to the mastermind of Spartan victories against the Messenians.[4] Variations on his Athenian origin and deformity are found in numerous ancient sources, including Diogenes Laërtius, who said that the Athenians regarded him as deranged,[5] Porphyry, who labelled him "one-eyed",[6] or Justin, who believed that he was sent to the Spartans by the Athenians as a deliberate insult.[7]

Bronze Spartan shield captured by Athenian soldiers at the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and now stored in the Ancient Agora Museum.
Tyrtaeus's poetry often advises Spartans how to handle their weapons and armour but, like the shield here, only a small portion survives today. Ancient Athenians claimed that Tyrtaeus was actually Athenian by birth. Some modern scholars also believe the poetry was composed by Athenians, probably in the 5th or 4th century BC.

The first of the entry of the Suda runs as follows:

Tyrtaeus, son of Archembrotus, a Laconian or Milesian elegiac poet and pipe-player. It is said that by means of his songs he urged on the Lacedaemonians in their war with the Messenians and in this way enabled them to get the upper hand. He is very ancient, contemporary with those called the Seven sages, or even earlier. He flourished in the 35th Olympiad (640–637 BC). He wrote a constitution for the Lacedaemonians, precepts in elegiac verse, and war songs, in five books.[8]

The second entry states that the Spartans took him as their general from among the Athenians in response to an oracle.

Tyrtaeus. The Lacedaemonians swore that they would either capture Messene or die, and when the god gave them an oracle to take a general from the Athenians, they took the poet Tyrtaeus, a man who was lame. By exhorting them to valour he captured Messene in the 20th year. They razed it and grouped the prisoners among the helots.[8]

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the picture of Tyrtaeus' life has been complicated by doubts about the authenticity of many of his verses, dated by various scholars to the 5th or 4th century BC.[9] A theory that "Tyrtaeus" was in fact a 5th century Athenian was even posited by Eduard Schwartz in 1899.[10][11] According to Gerber (1997), however, "that skepticism has now largely disappeared", and disagreements among scholars now essentially revolves around the version of fragment 4 that should be accepted as genuine (Plutarch's or Diodorus' version, or a combination of the two), and about the dating of fragment 12, which some critics have assigned to the time of Xenophanes (c. 570 – c. 475 BC) or shortly before 498 BC.[12]

The floruit given in the first entry of Suda is perhaps too early since Jerome offers a date of 633–632.[13] Modern scholars are less specific and provide instead date ranges for the Second Messenian War (and thus for Tyrtaeus' life) such as "the latter part of the 7th century",[14] or "any time between the sixties and the thirties" of the 7th century.[15]

The confusion about his place of origin, which emerged by the 5th century BC,[16] may have had several causes. It has been suggested that the depictions of Tyrtaeus as a lame schoolmaster from Athens were invented to denigrate Sparta,[2] which in the views of Athenians could not have had a talented poet of its own.[17] 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 unwilling to help the Spartans in their war with a more capable individual.[4] Yet, Tyrtaeus was not listed by Herodotus among the two foreigners ever to have been awarded Spartan citizenship.[18] One ancient source even listed Aphidnae as his supposed Athenian deme, but there was also a place of that name in Laconia.[19]

Ancient Athenian propaganda might indeed have played a role,[2] although even Plato, who could hardly have intended any denigration as an admirer of Sparta,[2] gave credence to the poet's Athenian origin.[20] According to scholar N. R. E. Fisher, "[t]he story was surely an invention by Athenians, designed in the first instance for a predominantly Athenian market. It must have been aimed at making co-operation between Sparta and Athens more acceptable".[21] It has also been noted that Tyrtaeus did not compose in the vernacular Laconian Doric dialect of Sparta, as could be expected of a native Spartan like his near contemporary Alcman.[22] However, Greek elegists used the Ionic dialect of Homer regardless of their city of origin or their audience.[23]

Scholars generally agree that Tyrtaeus was a native of Laconia for several reasons: the use of the first personal plural to include himself among the Heraclidae whom Zeus had given to Sparta in fragment 2;[23] the presence of occasional Doric words in his vocabulary;[22] and his tone of authority when addressing Spartan warriors, which would have been tolerated only if delivered by a Spartan-born poet.[23][22]

Spartan swordsman in bronze, applique originally part of a relief decorating a piece of furniture, 550–25 BC, probably showing Orestes on the verge of matricide
A continuing supply of cultivated luxuries was dearly purchased in blood and toil by Tyrtaeus's generation during a second war against the Messenians and was enjoyed less and less by later generations, who maintained their dominance over the Messenians only by submitting to a life of rigorous military discipline.[15]

His poems are the martial hymn-book of that discipline and devotion to the state which held Spartan ranks steady in the face of certain death at Thermopylae and became one of the enduring legends of western history.

— Barron and P. Easterling[24]

However his Sparta was not 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 Terpander 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.[22] The crisis was mentioned by Aristotle for its instructive power:

"Moreover, factions arise whenever some (aristocrats) are extremely poor and others are well off. And this happens especially during wars; it happened too in Sparta in the course of the Messenian War, as is clear from the poem of Tyrtaeus called Eunomia. For some, hard pressed because of the war, demanded a redistribution of the land."—Aristotle[25]

His verses seem to 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:[26] "life in Sparta became spartan".[15] Some modern scholars believe that Tyrtaeus helped to precipitate and formulate this transition[27] but others see no real evidence for this.[28]

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.[nb 1] 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,[nb 2] 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.[29] Others have argued that the Spartans at that time were still developing hoplite tactics[30] or that they were adapting hoplite tactics to encounter Messenian guerillas.[31]

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 recast the Homeric ideal of the single champion's arete (excellence) into the arete of the patriot".[32] 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.[33]

The second entry of the Suda, Athenaeus and Strabo claim that Tyrtaeus was a Spartan general.[34] Some modern scholars, such as F. Rossi (1967–68), maintain that Tyrtaeus held a high military position,[35] but Gerber (1997) contends that this is unlikely: "[i]t may have been assumed that only a military commander could give military admonitions and instructions, but it is an unnecessary assumption."[36]

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.[26] 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.[48]

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),[nb 5] 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.[49] The passage demonstrates one of the more common devices employed by Tyrtaeus—the use of parallel phrases for amplification, sometimes degenerating into tedious repetition.[50] Here it is used to communicate a sense of the crowded battlefield.

• Adkins, A. W. H. (1977). "Callinus 1 and Tyrtaeus 10 as Poetry". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 81: 59–97. doi:10.2307/311112. ISSN 0073-0688. JSTOR 311112.
• Barron, J. P.; Easterling, Patricia E. (1985). "Elegy and Iambus". In Easterling, P. E.; Knox, Bernard M. W. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-35981-8.
• Campbell, David A. (1982). Greek Lyric Poetry. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-86292-008-1.
• Fisher, N. R. E. (1994). "Sparta re(de)valued: some Athenian public attitudes to Sparta between Leuctra and the Lamian War". In Hodkinson, Stephen; Powell, Anton (eds.). The Shadow of Sparta. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-84892-8.
• Gerber, Douglas E. (1997). A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09944-9.
• Faraone, Christopher A. (2006). "Stanzaic Structure and Responsion in the Elegiac Poetry of Tyrtaeus". Mnemosyne. 59 (1): 19–52. doi:10.1163/156852506775455324. ISSN 0026-7074.
• West, Martin L. (2016), "Tyrtaeus", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6628, ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Gerber, Douglas E. (1999). Tyrtaeus, Solon, Theognis, Mimnermus. Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Gerber, Douglas E. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99582-6.
• West, Martin L. (1994). Greek Lyric Poetry: The Poems and Fragments of the Greek Iambic, Elegiac, and Melic Poets (Excluding Pindar and Bacchylides) Down to 450 BC. Translated by West, Martin L. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-283678-6.