Tyrtaeus’ Spartan Song of War – Read by Nullus – Featuring “Warfare” by Volk Dissident
Tyrtaeus was a Spartan elegiac poet who wrote during the 7th century B.C. He is known for writing about military and political themes encouraging Spartans to support the state and fight the Messenians. Tyrtaeus wrote intense lyrical elegies to illicit emotion and a call to action.
During this era, Sparta transitioned into its commonly known militaristic austere society. Alongside Lycurgan social and legal reforms, the poetry of Tyrtaeus significantly influenced Spartan social transformation and national identity.
In his book, Studies in Greek Philosophy: The Pre-socratics, Gregory Vlastos discusses Tyrtaeus in the following manner:
“As for Tyrtaeus, he was surely trying to exalt in Sparta (as Solon did in Athens) the “common good of the polis” as against the private ambitions of the nobles and their families. Certainly the Sparta of Tyrtaeus was no democracy. But neither did Tyrtaeus speak as an “aristocrat”; he was a spokesman for the cohesive nationalism of the new Sparta of Lycurgus reforms”