SOURCE: Fitzhardinge, L. F. “The Poets.” In The Spartans, pp. 124-35. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Fitzhardinge concentrates on the poetic subjects and styles of Tyrtaeus and Alcman.

Fairly extensive fragments have survived of the works of two seventh-century poets, Tyrtaeus and Alcman, who whether or not they were Spartan by birth were certainly so by adoption and interests.

Tyrtaeus wrote about the middle of the century, during and shortly after the second Messenian war. The Alexandrians had five books of his poems, containing martial exhortations, marching songs, and a poem known as Eunomia or ‘Good Order’. We have three samples of the exhortations, one quoted by a fourth-century orator at Athens and two included in a late anthology, but only two quotations, totalling twelve lines, certainly from the Eunomia, and a few short quotations of uncertain source. There is also a papyrus, now in...