Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/448

 482 HISTORY OF GREECE. tal training. Moreover, his sway over the youthful mind is par- ticularly noted in the compliment paid to him, in after-days, by king Leonidas : " Tyrtaeus was an adept in tickling the souls of youth." 1 We see enough to satisfy us that he was by birth a stranger, though he became a Spartan by the subsequent recom- pense of citizenship conferred upon him, that he was sent through the Delphian oracle, that he was an impressive and efficacious minstrel, and that he had, moreover, sagacity enough to employ his talents for present purposes and diverse needs ; being able, not merely to reanimate the languishing courage of the baffled warrior, but also to soothe the discontents of the mutinous. That his strains, which long maintained undiminished popularity among the Spartans, 2 contributed much to determine the ultimate issue of this war, there is no reason to doubt ; nor is his name the only one to attest the susceptibility of the Spartan mind in that day towards music and poetry. The first establish- ment of the Karneian festival, with its musical competition, at Sparta, falls during the period assigned by Pausanias to the second Messenian war : the Lesbian harper, Terpander, who gained the first recorded prize at this solemnity, is affirmed to have been sent for by the Spartans pursuant to a mandate from the Delphian oracle, and to have been the means of appeasing a sedition. In like manner, the Kretan Thaletas was invited thither during a pestilence, which his art, as it is pretended, con- tributed to heal (about G20 B. c.) ; and Alkman, Xenokritus, Polymnastus, and Sakadas, all foreigners by birth, found favora- ble reception, and acquired popularity, by their music and poetry. With the exception of Sakadas, who is a little later, all these names fall in the same century as Tyrtaeus, between G60 B. c. - 610 B. c. The fashion which the Spartan music continued for a long time to maintain, is ascribed chiefly to the genius of Terpander. 3 The training in which a Spartan passed his life consisted of exercises warlike, social, and religious, blended together. While the individual, strengthened by gymnastics, went through his 1 Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 2. 'AyaiSdf veuv T/t>uf alKuTJ^etv. See Plutarch, De Mus'cA, pp. 1134, 1142, 1 146.
 * Philochorus, Frag. 56, ed. Didot ; Lycurgus cent. Leokrat. p. 1G8.