Spartan Lessons; Or, the Praise of Valour; In the Verses of Tyrtaeus; An Ancient Athenian Poet, ...

by Tyrtaeus

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British Library

T136314

With a biographical introduction in English, the Greek text, notes on the text, and the Latin text taken from Stephens edition of 1579. With half-titles to the Greek and Latin texts. A variant has p.30 misnumbered p.26.

printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1759. xxvii, [5],20, [3],22-30 ill., ports.; 4

Genres: Poetry, History

66 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2010

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry to die for?

[Stephen Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in M. L. West’s translation. Tyrtaeus sings:

For it is fine to die in the front line,
a brave man fighting for his fatherland,
and the most painful fate’s to leave one’s town
and fertile farmlands for a beggar’s life,
roaming with mother dear and aged father,
with little children and with wedded wife.

He goes on in similar fashion, forcefully but repetitively contrasting the courageous and the cowardly. It all seems very Spartan, but Tyrtaeus’s contemporary Callinus of Ephesus voiced a similar opinion: “For proud it is and precious for a man to fight defending country, children, wedded wife against the foe.”

These are early entries in a long discourse on the virtues of dying in battle for one’s country, which led to Horace’s “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” and eventually to Wilfred Owen’s scathing denunciation of that way of thinking. I tend to side with Owen.