Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/133

LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. Ill If TyrtEeus came from Attica, it is easy to understand how the elegiac metre which had its origin in Ionia should have heen used by him, and that in the very style of Callinus. Athens was so closely connected with her Ionic colonies, that this new kind of poetry must have been soon known in the mother city. This circumstance would be far more inexplicable if Tyrtseus had been a Lacedaemonian by birth, as was stated vaguely by some ancient authors. For although Sparta was not at this period a stranger to the efforts of the other Greeks in poetry and music, yet the Spartans with their peulkr modes of thinking would not have been very ready to appropriate the new invention of the Ionians. Tyrteeus came to the Lacedemonians at a time when they were not only brought into great straits from without by the boldness of Aristo- menes, and the desperate courage of the Messenians, but the state was also rent with internal discord. The dissensions were caused by those Spartans who had owned lands in the conquered Messenia : now that the Messenians had risen against their conquerors, these lands were either in the hands of the enemy, or were left untilled from fear that the enemy would reap their produce ; and hence the proprietors of them demanded with vehemence a new division of lands — the most dangerous and dreadful of all measures in the ancient republics. In this condition of the Spartan commonwealth Tyrtaeus composed the most celebrated of his elegies, which, from its subject, was called Eunomia, that is, " Justice," or " Good Government," (also Politeia, or " The Constitution"). It is not difficult, on considering attentively the character of the early Greek elegy, to form an idea of the manner in which Tyrtifius probably handled this subject. He doubtless began with remarking the anarchi- cal movement among the Spartan citizens, and by expressing the con- cern with which he viewed it. But as in general the elegy seeks to pass from an excited state of the mind through sentiments and images of a miscellaneous description to a state of calmness and tranquillity, it may be conjectured that the poet in the Eunomia made this transition by drawing a picture of the well-regulated constitution of Sparta, and the legal existence of its citizens, which, founded with the divine assist- ance, ought not to be destroyed by the threatened innovations ; and that at the same time he reminded the Spartans, who had been deprived of their lands by the Messenian war, that on their courage would depend the recovery of their possessions and the restoration of the former pros- perity of the state. This view is entirely confirmed by the fragments of Tyrtyeus, some of which are distinctly stated to belong to the Euno- mia. In these the constitution of Sparta is extolled, as being founded by the power of the Gods ; Zeus himself having given the country to the Ileracleids, and the power having been distributed in the justest manner, according to the oracles of the Pythian Apollo, among the kings, the gerons in the council, and the men of the commonalty in the popular assembly.