A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

TYRTAEUS. ~TYRTAEUS. 1197
Italy between the natives and the Trojan settlers. the connection of Aphidnae with Laconia a reason
(Virg. Aen. vii. 483, &c., ix. 28.) [L. S.] why that town, above all others in Attica, should
TYRTAEUS (Tvpra?os, or TVpraros), son of have been fixed upon as the abode of Tyrtaeus.
Archembrotus, the celebrated poet, who assisted On the same supposition the motive for the fabricathe Spartans in the Second Messenian War, was tion of the tradition is to be found in the desire
the second in order of time of the Greek elegiac which Athenian writers so often displayed, and
poets, Callinus being the first. At the time when which is the leading idea in the passage of Lycurgus
his name first appears in history, he is represented, referred to above, to claim for Athens the greatest
according to the prevalent account, as living- at possible share of all the greatness and goodness
Aphidnae in Attica; but the whole tradition, of which illustrated the Hellenic race:which this statement forms a part, has the same
mythical complexion by which all the accounts of " Sunt quibus unum opus est, intactae Palladis
the early Greek poets are more or less pervaded. Carmin
In attempting to trace'the tradition to its source, Carmine perpetuo celebrare, et
we find in Plato the brief statement, that Tyrtaeus Undiq discerptarn fronti praeponere olivam."
was by birth an Athenian, but became a citizen of On the other hand, Strabo (I. c.) rejects the
Lacedaemon (De Legg. i. p. 629). The orator tradition altogether, and makes Tyrtaeus a native
Lycurgus tells the story more fully; that, when of Lacedaemon, on the authority of certain passages
the Spartans were at war with the Messenians, in his poems. He tells us that Tyrtaeus stated
they were commanded by an oracle to take a leader that the first conquest of Messenia was made in
from among the Athenians, and thus to conquer the time of the grandfathers of the men of his own
their enemies; and that the leader they so chose generation (IKaTra ors'rwZ 7raTf'pcOv 7raTcpas), and
from Athens was Tyrtaeus. (Lycurg. c. TLeocr. that in the second he himself was leader of the
p. 211, ed. Reiske.) We learn also from Strabo Lacedaemonians; and then Strabo adds, — directly
(viii. p. 362) and Athenaeus (xiv. p. 630, f.) that after the words Tros AlaKeeSaioitoroLs,-Kal'yap etva'
Philochorus and Callisthenes and many other his- P70'iYv EKe0e, EV r'V 70ro0410OeL.eyei,, rV E'7ryp&torians gave a similar account, and made Tyrtaeus povIov Evbvoutzav'
an Athenian of Aphidnae (ebrovcrv e''AO?lvzv cr, AiTb. -yhp KpovKwv icaXXtaTepdvou lrJis "Hpsj'AcpLvJv a&uLcoOal). The tradition appears in a Zebrs'HpacKAoEfaiS T-rP8' e'3wic 7rdAh.
still more enlarged form in Pausanias (iv. 15. ~ 3), Oe-sv &pa 7rpoars'Eprwebs Of'E/A6v,
I)iodorus (xv. 66.), the Scholia to Plato (p. 448, EOl eiv lae'Ao7ros'VlSev cpiic4e.deTa
ed. Bekker), Themistius (xv. p. 242, s. 197,198),
Justin (iii. 5), the scholiast on Horace (Art. From which Strabo draws the conclusion, that
P'oet. 402), and other writers (see Clinton, F. II. either the elegies containing these verses are
vol. i. s. a. 683). Of these writers, however, only spurious, or else that the statement of Philochorus,
Pausalias, Justin, the Scholiast on Horace, and &c. (as already quoted) must be rejected. The
Suidas, give us the well-known embellishment of commentators, however, are not content with
the story which represents Tyrtaeus as a lame Strabo's own negative inference from the verses
~schoolmaster, of low family and reputation, whom quoted, but will have it that he understood them
the Athenians, when applied to by the Lacedae- as declaring that Tyrtaeus himself came from
monians in accordance with the oracle, purposely Erineos to join the Spartans in their war against
sent as the most inefficient leader they could select, the Messenians; and, to give a colour to this interbeing unwilling to assist the Lacedaemonians in pretation, Casaubon assumes as self-evident that
extending their dominion in the Peloponnesus, but after Tros AaKe8autovi'ois some such words as E'AO&v
little thinking that the poetry of Tyrtaeus would E'Eptve'ov have been lost. But, if the passage
achieve that victory, which his physical constitution says that Tyrtaeus came from. Erineos at all, it
seemed to forbid his aspiring to. Now to accept says as plainly that he came thence to Peloponnesus
the details of this tradition as historical facts together with the Heracleidae; and it is therefore
would be to reject all the principles of criticism, clear that the verses refer, not to any removal of
and to fall back on the literal interpretation of Tyrtaeus himself, but to the great migration of the
mythical accounts; but, on the other hand, we are Dorian ancestors of those Lacedaemonians for whom
equally forbidden by sound criticism to reject he spoke, and among whom he, in some sense, inaltogether that element of the tradition, which cluded himself; and the argument of Strabo, as the
represents Tyrtaeus as, in some way or other, con- passage stands, is that Tyrtaeus was a Lacedaenected with the Attic town of Aphidnae. Perhaps monian (eKeZ0ev, referring, of course, to AaKecaltpothe explanation may be found in the comparison of vlois), because of the intimate way in which he
the tradition with the facts, that Tyrtaeus was an associates himself with the descendants of the
elegiac poet, and that the elegy had its origin in Dorians who migrated from Erineos (one of the
Ionia, and also with another tradition, preserved four Dorian states of Thessaly) to the Peloponby Suidas (s. v.), which made the poet a native of nesus. The true question that remains is this,
Miletus; from which results the probability that whether his manner of identifying himself with
either Tyrtaeus himself, or his immediate ancestors, the Lacedaemonians in this passage, and in the
migrated from Ionia to Sparta, either directly, or phrase about their fathers' fathers, implies that he
by way of Attica, carrying with them a knowledge himself was really a descendant of those Dorians
of the principles of the elegy. Aphidnae, the town who invaded the Peloponnesus, and of those Laceof Attica to which the tradition assigns him, was daemonians who fought in the first Messenian
connected with Laconia, from a very early period, war, or whether this mode of expression is suffiby the legends about the Dioscuri; but it is hard ciently explained by the close association into
to say whether this circumstance renders the story which he had been thrown with the Spartans,
more probable or more suspicious; for, on the sup- whom he not only aided in war, but by whom he
position that the story is an invention, we have in had been nmade a citizen. This last fact is ex