20 Paıdeía
the young men, breathing out his life in the dust, and clasping his hands to a
bloodied groin.” The Spartan king Leonidas reportedly spoke of Tyrtaeus as “a
poet good for stirring up the young [néoı] .”^41 It is not difficult to see why.
In a similar poem, Tyrtaeus reminded his compatriots that their leaders
and others in their ranks were descended from “Heracles the unconquered.”
There, he urged them to treat “life as something hateful” and to hold “the black
ruin of death as dear as the beams of the sun.”
Of those who dare to stand by one another and to march
Into the van where the fighting is hand to hand,
Rather few die, and they safeguard the host behind.
But for the men who are tremblers all virtue is lost.
No one can describe singly in words nor count the evils
That come to a man once he has suffered disgrace.
For in dread war it is alluring to pierce from behind
The back of a man in headlong flight,
And disgraceful is the corpse laid out in the dust,
Thrust through from behind by the point of a spear.After issuing this admonition, the poet urged each of the hoplites to close
with, wound, and take out his foe. “Placing foot next to foot, pressing shield
against shield, bringing crest near crest, helm near helm, and chest near chest,
let him battle it out with the man [opposite], grasping the handle of his sword
or the long spear.”^42
Tyrtaeus’ debt to Homer was enormous. This much is obvious from his
diction alone. But despite all that he owed his great predecessor, the Spartan
poet rejected the Homeric precedent and radically altered the heroic ethic.
Tyrtaeus did not glorify that Achilles who had valued his own honor above the
interest of the Achaean host; nor did he celebrate the exploits of Odysseus “the
man of many ways” who wandered through “the cities of many men and
learned their minds.” He heaped praise not on the great individual who sought
“to be the best and to excel all others,” but on the citizen who never traveled
abroad except on campaign and who fought gamely alongside his companions
in the city’s hoplite phalanx.^43
To make his point in the boldest possible fashion, Tyrtaeus turned to the
mythological tradition. To bring home to his listeners the inadequacy of the
traditional understanding of human excellence, he provided them with a list
of legendary individuals who exhibited qualities and faculties universally ad-
mired but who nonetheless performed in a fashion that called into question
the esteem conventionally conferred on those very qualities and faculties. As