A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

—
CHAPTER XIV
THE POETS AND THE PHILOSOPHERS
FROM THE SEVENTH TO THE EARLY FIFTH CENTURY B.C.
I. A War-Song
By Callinus
Sit ye in quiet how long? Stir up the fierce spirit within you;
Have ye no feeHng of shame, youths, for the dwellers around?
Why thus remiss? Do ye think ye are sitting in blissful contentment
Peace given, while dread war holds all our dear native land?
Now in the moment of death hurl your last spear at the foe!
Honored is he and esteemed who fights in the foremost of lancers,
Guarding his country, his home, guarding his dear wedded wife.
Fighting with foes; for death comes but once, and whenever it may be.
Fate cuts the thread of our life. Each must go quick to the front.
Grasping his spear in his hand, and under his shield his untrembhng
Heart pressing, panting for fight, mingling in deadliest fray.
Fate hath decreed that from death there shall be by no prudence
avoiding;
Doomed are all mortals to die, saving no sons of the gods.
Often the din of the battle, the hurtling of lances escaping,
Sees man the terror of death stalking into his home.
Weaklings are dear to no state, nor in death by the people lamented;
Warriors the great and the small mourn when they face their fair
doom;
Longing intense fills all hearts in the land for the stout-minded hero
Dying in liberty's cause; living they hold him divine.
Just like a tower of defence in the eyes of the people appearing.
Works he the deeds of a host, striving alone in his might.
Callinus of
Ephesus
wrote this
poem to
rouse his
countrymen
against
the barbarous
Cimmerians,
who assailed
them.
The metre of
the translation—elegiac
pentameter
is that of
the original.
The poem
breathes
military fire.
II.
TvRTiEUS
Noble it is to fall a valiant man in the front line of warriors
battling for the fatherland, but of all things most
141