Paıdeía 19
about the shrine of Artemis Orthia: one intent on running off with the cheese
piled high on the altar, the other wielding whips in defense of the agricultural
products prepared for the virgin goddess. If these young Spartans repeatedly
endured injuries and insults like those to which the helots were subjected, it
was to establish—by a display of endurance and the fact that, in the face of
pain, they were utterly unfazed—their worthiness to pass on from the thresh-
old and join the ranks of the only Lacedaemonians who were in the fullest
sense of the word free men.^40
The bulk of Tyrtaeus’ poetry dealt neither with just conquest nor with the
proper form for organizing rule nor even with the suffering inflicted on the
helots. He composed his verse in the middle of the seventh century—much of
it during the Second Messenian War, when the Spartans fought doggedly to
recover leverage over the rich province they had, in effect, acquired on the
western side of Mount Taygetus some two generations before. Tyrtaeus’ prin-
cipal subject was not peace, but war. In one of his hortatory elegies, he drew
the attention of his compatriots to the manner in which their well-being de-
pended on the fate of the city itself.
It is a noble thing for a brave man to die,
Falling in the front ranks, doing battle for the fatherland.
But for a man to forsake his city and his rich fields
And to go begging is of all things the most grievous
As he wanders with his dear mother and his aged father,
With his small children and his lawful, wedded wife.
For he is hated by those among whom he goes as a suppliant
Yielding to need and loathsome penury;
He disgraces his lineage; he refutes his splendid appearance,
And every dishonor and evil follows in his train.
Now if no heed is paid to a wandering man
And neither reverence nor regard nor pity is his,
Let us then fight with spirit for our land and children
And let us die, not sparing our lives.In the young men posted in the phalanx’ front ranks, the poet sought to instill
what he called “a spiritedness great and firm.” He encouraged them not to hold
life dear as they did battle with the foe; he exhorted them to stand closely
bunched; and he warned them never “to make a start of fear and shameful
flight.” There is something splendid, he argued, about the death in battle of a
young man, blessed with the bloom of youth, admired by his fellows and be-
loved of women. But there is no sight quite as disgraceful and none as horrid
as that of a graybeard fallen in the front ranks, “sprawled on the earth before