Tyrtaeus

*Turtai=os, (or Τύρταιος), son of Archembrotus, the celebrated poet, who assisted the Spartans in the Second Messenian War, was the second in order of time of the Greek elegiac poets, Callinus being the first. At the time when his name first appears in history, he is represented, according to the prevalent account, as living at Aphidnae in Attica; but the whole tradition, of which this statement forms a part, has the same mythical complexion by which all the accounts of the early Greek poets are more or less pervaded. In attempting to trace the tradition to its source, we find in Plato the brief statement, that Tyrtaeus was by birth an Athenian, but became a citizen of Lacedaemon (De Legg. i. p. 629). The orator Lycurgus tells the story more fully; that, when the Spartans were at war with the Messenians, they were commanded by an oracle to take a leader from among the Athenians, and thus to conquer their enemies; and that the leader they so chose from Athens was Tyrtaeus. (Lycurg. c. Leocr. p. 211, ed. Reiske.) We learn also from Strabo (viii. p.362) and Athenaeus (xiv. p. 630. f.) that Philochorus and Callisthenes and many other historians gave a similar account, and made Tyrtaeus an Athenian of Aphidnae (εἰποῦσιν ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν καὶ Ἀφιδνῶν ἀφικέσθαι). The tradition appears in a still more enlarged form in Pausanias (4.15.3), Diodorus (15.66), the Scholia, to Plato (p. 448, ed. Bekker), Themistius (xv. p. 242, s. 197, 198), Justin (3.5), the scholiast on Horace (Art. Poet.  402), and other writers (see Clinton, F. H. vol. i. s. a. 683). Of these writers, however, only Pausanias, Justin, the Scholiast on Horace, and Suidas, give us the well-known embellishment of the story which represents Tyrtaeus as a lame schoolmaster, of low family and reputation, whom the Athenians, when applied to by the Lacedaemonians in accordance with the oracle, purposely sent as the most inefficient leader they could select, being unwilling to assist the Lacedaemonians in extending their dominion in the Peloponnesus, but little thinking that the poetry of Tyrtaeus would achieve that victory, which his physical constitution seemed to forbid his aspiring to. Now to accept the details of this tradition as historical facts would be to reject all the principles of criticism, and to fall back on the literal interpretation of mythical accounts; but, on the other hand, we are equally forbidden by sound criticism to reject altogether that element of the tradition, which represents Tyrtaeus as, in some way or other, connected with the Attic town of Aphidnae. Perhaps the explanation may be found in the comparison of the tradition with the facts, that Tyrtaeus was an elegiac poet. and that the elegy had its origin in Ionia, and also with another tradition, preserved by Suidas (s. v.), which made the poet a native of Miletas; from which results the probability that either Tyrtaeus himself, or his immediate ancestors, migrated from Ionia to Sparta, either directly, or by way of Attica, carrying with them a knowledge of the principles of the elegy. Aphidnae, the town of Attica to which the tradition assigns him. was connected with Laconia, from a very early period, by the legends about the Dioscuri; but it is hard to say whether this circumstance renders the story more probable or more suspicious; for, on the supposition that the story is an invention, we have in the connection of Aphidnae with Laconia a reason why that town, above all others in Attica, should have been fixed upon as the abode of Tyrtaeus. On the same supposition the motive for the fabrication of the tradition is to be found in the desire which Athenian writers so often displayed, and which is the leading idea in the passage of Lycurgus referred to above, to claim for Athens the greatest possible share of all the greatness and goodness which illustrated the Hellenic race : --

Sunt quibus unum opus est, intactae Palladis urbem

Carmine perpetuo celebrare, et

Undique discerptam fronti praeponere

Bronze Spartan shield captured by Athenian soldiers at the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and now stored in the Ancient Agora Museum.
Tyrtaeus's poetry often advises Spartans how to handle their weapons and armour but, like the shield here, only a small portion survives today. Ancient Athenians claimed that Tyrtaeus was actually Athenian by birth. Some modern scholars also believe the poetry was composed by Athenians, probably in the 5th or 4th century BC.

Credit:

 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=tyrtaeus-bio-1