Alkaios
Aristodemos wasn't lying
when he said one day in Sparta,
"Money is the man; and a poor man
can be neither good nor honourable."
Ibykos
Spartan girls are naked-thighed and man-crazy
Simonides
These men left an altar of glory on their land,
shining in all weather,
when they were enveloped by the black mists of death.
but although they died
they are not dead, for their courage raises them in glory
from the rooms of Hell.
Their tomb is an altar on which stands our bowls of remembrance
and the wine of our praise.
Neither mold nor worms, nor time
which destroys all things, will blacken their deaths.
The shrine of these brave men
has found its guardian
in the glory of Greece. Leonidas, the Spartan King,
lives in the great ornament he left behind
of unending fame and virtue.
Stranger, go back to Sparta and tell our people
that we who were slain obeyed the code.
Leonidas, king of the open fields of Sparta,
those slain with you lie famous in their graves,
for they attacked absorbing the head-on assault
of endless Persian men, arrows and swift horse
This is the tomb of famous Megistias, slain by
the Persians near the Spercheios River,
a seer who even when aware that death was near
would not desert his Spartan Kings.
Theognis
I have spent long days in the land of Sicily, and walked
though the vineyards of the Euboian plain;
saw the city of Sparta shining by the reedy Eurotas.
Everywhere people took me into their homes
yet my heart found no pleasure in foreign kindness.
No place is as precious as one's homeland.
Bakchylides
One day in spacious Sparta
goldhaired girls
danced to a song
when courageous Idas
led Marpessa of the violet braids
to his own rooms
after eluding death.
Poseidon the sealord
gave him a chariot
and horses equal to the wind,
and sent him to the handsome city of Pleuron
and to the son of Ares of the gold shield.
Tyrtaios
SPARTAN SOLDIER
It is beautiful when a brave man of the front ranks
falls and dies, battling for his homeland,
and ghastly when a man flees planted fields and
city
and wanders begging with his dear mother,
aging father, little children and true wife.
He will be scorned in every new village,
reduced to want and loathsome poverty; and shame
will brand his family line, his noble
figure. Derision and disaster will hound him.
A turncoat gets no respect or pity;
so let us battle for our country and freely give
our lives to save our darling children.
Young men, fight shield to shield and never
succumb
to panic or miserable flight,
but steel the heart in your chests with
magnificence
and courage. Forget your own life
when you grapple with the enemy. Never run
and let an old soldier collapse
whose legs have lost their power. It is shocking
when
an old man lies on the front line
before a youth: an old warrior whose head is white
and beard gray, exhaling his strong soul
into the dust, clutching his bloody genitals
in his hands: an abominable vision,
foul to see: his flesh naked. But in a young man
all is beautiful when he still
possesses the shining flower of lovely youth.
Alive he is adored by men,
desired by women, and finest to look upon
when he falls dead in the forward clash.
Let each man spread his legs, rooting them in the ground,
bite his teeth into his lips, and hold.
FRONTIERS
You should reach the limits of virtue
before you cross the border of death.
'Music was first established in Sparta by Terpandros'
-Plutarch, On Music