And the line does appear, as we shall see; but well before then, about six months after the catastrophe of 1 July, it is Horace's ultimate model, the late seventh-century BC Spartan poet,
Tyrtaeus, who is quoted (fragment 10, lines 27-30), in the anonymous article "Our Heroic Dead" (16.3 [1916: 5]):
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.
The Spartan poet
Tyrtaeus wrote, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]: "You should reach the limits of virtue / before you cross the border of death." What a noble aim!
The poets
Tyrtaeus, Archilochus, and Alcaeus, the historians Thucydides and Polybius, the philosopher Melissus, the playwright Sophocles: all were soldiers, most of them commanders.
The hoplite phalanx with special references to the poems of Archilochos and
Tyrtaeus. Annual of the British School at Athens, 42:76-138, 1947.
Thus, in a world where moral conformity and a strong sense of duty dominate, he declares: "We prefer for example Goethe to Korner and Sappho to
Tyrtaeus; we would give many patriots for one artist, considering that civic virtue is more easily to be had than lyric genius" ("Victor Hugo," p.
This title refers us directly to Odes 3.2.13 even though the line originally occurs in
Tyrtaeus fr.
Hall severely damages his own credibility when he undercuts a significant class of evidence that he also makes abundant use of "the fact that we lack secure, independent evidence for the date of
Tyrtaeus' poetry and cannot even be sure if he was an individual historical personality as opposed to a name attached to a longer cumulative poetic tradition" (p.
There was, however, no objection to a national poet like
Tyrtaeus who united Sparta and prepared it for war against external enemies.
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).
Greek tradition after
Tyrtaeus' time claimed that he was an Athenian or Milesian schoolmaster who was sent to Sparta in reluctant compliance with an oracle to strengthen Spartan morale.
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 4.3, 4.4), but also that Nicias's definition is not Socratic but rather sophistic and Promethian, connected with Periclean humanism (sections 5.1-5.3).
