Tyrtaeus 12 West: come join the Spartan Army

Few scholars are likely to quibble with a characterization of early Spartan historiography as a highly speculative affair, for it is necessarily so, given the small quantity of evidence available.1 That being the case, it is all the more important that the data we do possess be fully exploited and given their proper weight. Tyrtaeus 12 (West) is, in this author’s estimation, one such piece of evidence which stands to benefit from further analysis.2 For the contention developed here that the poem is both genuinely Tyrtaean while at the same time unique in the corpus has potentially important implications for our understanding of early military developments at Sparta.