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Among the latter may be mentioned CONSTANTINOS RHIGAS, a native of Thessaly, born in 1753, a man of fine accomplishments and an ardent patriot, whose lyric ballads are said to have "rung through Greece like a trumpet," and who has been styled "the Tyrtae'us of modern Greece." One of his war-songs has been thus translated: Sons of the Greeks, arise!
Passing over Simonides of Amorgos, who is chiefly celebrated for a very ungallant but ingenious and smooth satire on women, and over Tyrtae'us, whose animating and patriotic odes, as we have seen, proved the safety of Sparta in one of the Messenian wars, we come to the first truly lyric poet of Greece Alcman originally a Lydian slave in a Spartan family, but emancipated by his master on account of his genius.
Fearing to disobey the oracle, but reluctant to further the cause of the Spartans, the Athenians sent to the latter the poet TYRTAE'US, who had no distinction as a warrior. His patriotic and martial odes, however, roused the spirit of the Spartans, and animated them to new efforts against the foe.
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