Author: TYRTAEUS
Biography:
TYRTAEUS (fl c. 650 BCE: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Tyrtaeus was a Greek lyric poet who applied his talent especially to patriotic verses designed to spur on the soldiers of Sparta in their second war against Messina. One of his lines—a typical theme--is echoed in Horace’s “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country). Henry James Pye, q.v., published his “Imitations” of the war-elegies in 1795. The works of Tyrtaeus are known mainly through fragments preserved in the writings of other authors. Very little is known about his life, though legend had it that he was a soldier, Athenian by birth and sent by Athens to Sparta to assist the war effort. According to Plato, however, he was a citizen of Sparta and it would have been unusual for a foreigner to be granted that status; it is possible that he was a native of the city-state. One of the translators listed here, Richard Polwhele, was a poet in his own right and has a separate headnote. The other, John Young (1746/7-1820), who translated the Martial Effusions to encourage British troops during the Napoleonic wars, was Professor of Greek at Glasgow University. He was a native of Glasgow, born on 14 Jan. 1746/7 to Agnes (Jameson) and Robert Young. Though his father was a cooper, he attended the university (matric. 1764, MA 1769) and was appointed to his chair there in 1774. On 25 Sept. 1780 he married Jean Lamont, with whom he had seven children. He died at Glasgow on 18 Nov. 1820. Young was remembered chiefly for his enthusiasm and wit as a teacher, but he did also publish a spoof analysis of Gray, A Criticism of the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1783). (Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edn. [1911] 27: 551; NBG 45, cols. 760-2; The Classical Tradition, ed. A. Grafton et al. [2010], 286; ODNB [Young] 10 Feb. 2025; findmypast.com 10 Feb. 2025) HJ