Tyrtæus

Tyrtæus, famed for his political elegies and war-songs, was either an Athenian or a citizen of Aphidnæ, in Attica, who lived in the 7th century B.C. The story which represents him as a lame schoolmaster, of mean family, whom the Athenians (ignorant of his lyric power, and jealous of Lacedæmonian domination in the Peloponnesus) sent to the Lacedæmonians, during the second Messenian war, as the most inefficient commander they could select, must be received as a fiction of later times. He rendered, however, to the Lacedæmonians a kind of assistance which the Athenians little foresaw; and while by his elegies he stilled their dissensions at home, by his war-lyrics he so animated their courage in the field that they were finally triumphant in their conflict with the Messenians, whom they reduced to the condition of Helots. His songs, a few of which we have complete, and must regard as amongst the finest remains of antique poetry, lived on the lips of the Spartans so long as Sparta was a state. There are editions in Schneidewin's Delectus and in Bergk's Poëta Lyrici Græci.