by a general to his soldiers exhorting them not to fear death:—
“With dying hand still hurl the quivering spear! |
Tyrtaeus (about B.C. 685–668) migrated from Athens to Sparta, and wrote marching songs and stirring exhortations to the Spartans to fight to the death against the Messenians, as well as a poem named Eunomia, meant to allay party conflicts in Sparta. One tradition represented him as a lame schoolmaster, whom the Athenians contemptuously sent to Sparta in answer to an appeal for help, and who turned out to be the greatest benefit they could have sent for the spirit which his verses inspired in the Spartan youth. The poems either aim at making the Spartans proud of their country and its customs, or exhort the young men to gallantry. “The most desirable death is that which comes in the forefront of the fight, if the youth wishes to be praised of men and loved of women. He dies, but lives for ever: he is mourned and honoured by old and young. If he plays the coward, shame covers him, and life is a misery : he must wander forth a beggar with wife and child, loathed and contemned by all.”
The poems of Solon (c. B.C. 620–560) are more peaceful and political, though the earliest is an exhortation to the Athenians to secure by arms the
