Tyrtaeus

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Tyrtaeus

(tərtē`əs), fl. 7th cent. B.C. at Sparta, Greek elegiac poet. Fragments of his martial elegies in Dorian Greek, which were written to spur Spartan soldiers to victory, are extant. An Athenian legend relates that Athens sent Tyrtaeus, a lame schoolmaster, to Sparta when Sparta needed help in war.

Tyrtaeus

Ancient Greek poet of the second half of the seventh century B.C. Born in Athens or Laconia. Lived in Sparta.

In his elegies, written in the Ionic dialect, Tyrtaeus condemned cupidity and discord, called for unity, and extolled Sparta’s past glory and bravery in battle. Tyrtaeus was among the first to speculate on the origins of the state in its existing form and on ways to preserve it for the welfare of the entire citizenry.

WORKS

Anthologia lyrica Graeca, fase. 1. Edited by E. Diehl. Leipzig, 1954.
In Russian translation:
In V. V. Latyshev. Na dosuge. St. Petersburg, 1898.

REFERENCES

Iarkho, V., and K. Polonskaia. Antichnaia lirika. Moscow, 1967. Pages 26–28.
Snell, B. Tyrtaios und die Sprache des Epos. Göttingen, 1969.

Tyrtaeus

(fl. 7th century B.C.) elegist; roused Spartans to Messenian triumph. [Gk. Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 1111]

See: Inducement

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References in periodicals archive ?

The issue of when the phalanx acquired depth, absent in the phalanx of Tyrtaeus (seventh century) and the sine qua non of a true phalanx, is not addressed.

Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Classical Greece

The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus wrote, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]: "You should reach the limits of virtue / before you cross the border of death.

To reach the limits of virtue

The poets Tyrtaeus, Archilochus, and Alcaeus, the historians Thucydides and Polybius, the philosopher Melissus, the playwright Sophocles: all were soldiers, most of them commanders.

Athens vs. Sparta: the academic-military divide

The hoplite phalanx with special references to the poems of Archilochos and Tyrtaeus.

A historiography on the war in ancient Greece: from the "account-battles" to the historical-cultural approach/A historiografia sobre a guerra na Grecia antiga: dos "relatos-batalha" a abordagem historico-cultural

13 even though the line originally occurs in Tyrtaeus fr.

Celebrating the past: horace's odes as aide memoire

And yet the poetic remains of Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, Alcaeus and a handful of others he mines assiduously (and in my opinion correctly), in the confidence that we are in the presence of first-hand and for the most part reliable witnesses.

A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200-479 BCE

There was, however, no objection to a national poet like Tyrtaeus who united Sparta and prepared it for war against external enemies.

Claudia Baracchi. Of Myth, Life and War in Plato's Republic

In the middle of his summary of Ephorus' account of the foundation of Tarentum, Strabo quotes five lines of Tyrtaeus (which it is reasonable to assume that he is also reproducing from Ephorus).

SIMONIDES, EPHORUS, AND HERODOTUS ON THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE

He maintains that the secondary literature has failed to appreciate sufficiently not only that Laches' definition of courage is thoroughly traditional, deriving from Homer and Tyrtaeus (sections 4.

On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato's Laches

The litotes in that last sentence is Sisson's own, a pointed and free extrapolation from the much less guarded wording we find in Horace, where after the mention of Amphion, Homer, and Tyrtaeus and the point that song has been the means for oracular utterance and moral teaching, we have this: "ne forte pudori / sit tibi Musa lyrae sollers et cantor Apollo [so that you may not feel ashamed of the Muse skilled in the lyre and of the singer Apollo].

The occasion and contexture of speech in contemporary British poetry

5) Coleridge's later side reference to Gleim as |the Tyrtaeus and Anacreon of the German Parnassus', in chaper 22 of Biographia Literaria, probably reflects his knowledge of Taylor's 1798 article rather than of Gleim's original work: Taylor had there suggested |he [Gleim] has endeavoured to become both the Anacreon and the Tyrtaeus of his country'.

William Taylor's 'The Vision' and its source in Johann Gleim's 'Preussische Kriegeslieder.'

As the Boer War -- and the jingoists -- raged he was looked to as a new Tyrtaeus.