In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. the Spartans fought two wars with neighboring Messenia. During the First Messenia War, Lycurgus gave his famous laws to Sparta, but scholars see the warrior-poet Tyrtaeus, who lived during the Second Messenian War, as the man who first envisioned the true Spartan – the people they became and whom we think of as Classical Spartans.
“Spartan
Soldier”
~Tyrtaeus
of Sparta (c. 620 B.C.)
It
is beautiful when a brave man of the front ranks,
falls
and dies, battling for his homeland,
and
ghastly when a man flees planted fields and city
and
wanders begging with his dear mother,
aging
father, little children and true wife.
He
will be scorned in every new village,
reduced
to want and loathsome poverty; and shame
will
brand his family line, his noble
figure.
Derision and disaster will hound him.
A
turncoat gets no respect or pity;
so
let us battle for our country and freely give
our
lives to save our darling children.
Young
men, fight shield to shield and never succumb
to
panic or miserable flight,
but
steel the heart in your chests with magnificence
and
courage. Forget your own life
when
you grapple with the enemy. Never run
and
let an old soldier collapse
whose
legs have lost their power. It is shocking when
an
old man lies on the front line
before
a youth: an old warrior whose head is white
and
beard gray, exhaling his strong soul
into
the dust, clutching his bloody genitals
into
his hands: an abominable vision,
foul
to see: his flesh naked. But in a young man
all
is beautiful when he still
possesses
the shining flower of lovely youth.
Alive
he is adored by men,
desired
by women, and finest to look upon
when
he falls dead in the forward clash.
Let
each man spread his legs, rooting them in the ground,
bite
his teeth into his lips, and hold.
One thing that always strikes me about the Greeks is how their will to fight was based solely on their love of hearth. They were never just fighters like the Romans.
ReplyDeleteI like the Greeks a lot better than the Romans. One thing I'm hoping to learn from this Ancient Greeks course is why their polity failed.
DeleteYes, the more I read the more I love the Greeks and the less I like the Romans.
DeleteIt's fascinating how those sentiments clash with all the modern poets-- especially the notion that it is good for the young do die, rather than the old.
ReplyDeleteReally, you prefer the Greeks? I have to admit I feel the opposite! The Greeks were awfully... pragmatic, a lot of the time, while the Romans were inclined (like us) to romanticize and pursue a more Western sense of nobility, virtue, and morality. Aeneas is sure different from Achilles! I wrote a paper about that, but I shall spare you from having to read it here. :-)
I love the Romans that I meet in Rosemary Sutcliff's books (especially Marcus in The Eagle of the Ninth; he reminds me of Aeneas), but in Edith Hamilton's books (The Greek Way, The Roman Way) I like the Greeks better. I like their sense of humor and their way of seeing into the nature of things, as how math and music are the same thing. Also, I like their political order better -- the independent city-states, the confederations between them, the citizen-soldier/militia rather than a standing army. The Romans appeal to the Welsh in me, but the Greeks appeal to the Scottish and Choctaw side. :-)
DeleteYou should post your paper on your blog. I'd like to read it. I'm not actually a great fan of Achilles. I love Hector the best.
Thank you for sharing that, Kelly! The course sounds fascinating. :)
ReplyDelete