THE OLD GREEK VOLUNTEER 479 



joy and triumph to be buried with their ancestors, to whom was offered 

 a worship second only to that paid the gods. The shield was used as a 

 bier on which the dead were carried home from the battle-field and 

 from this custom tradition has handed down the famous appeal of the 

 Spartan mother to her son, on his departure to the conflict, girt with 

 this defensive arm : " Bring it with you or be brought on it," or better 

 still " It or upon it." 1 



Though the Spartans never wrote the history of their wars, frag- 

 ments of their war-bard, Tyrtseus, singer of the Marseillaise of Greece, 

 seven centuries before our era, ring with tones of Dorian loyalty and 

 scornful pity for the recreant in battle : 



Up! Youths of the Spartan nobles, 

 Ye citizen sons of the elders! 

 With the left hold out your targes, 

 And fling your spears with boldness. 

 Spare not your lives. To spare them 

 Was never known in Sparta. 



■ — Allinson. 



How glorious fall the valiant, sword in hand, 

 In front of battle for their native land! 

 But oh! what ills await the wretch that yields, 

 A recreant outcast from his country's fields ! 

 The mother whom he loves shall quit her home, 

 An aged father at his side shall roam ; 

 His little ones shall weeping with him go, 

 And a young wife participate his woe; 

 While scorned and scowled upon by every face 

 They pine for food and beg from place to place. 



But we will combat for our father's land 

 And we will drain the life-blood where we stand 

 To save our children. 



— Stmonds. 



A beautiful custom at Athens by which national gratitude was 

 paid to the memory of her noble sons who fell in battle, was the solemn 

 interment of their ashes in a public tomb in the National Cemetery, 

 situated in the most beautiful portion of the outskirts, near the 

 " Double Gate." This public distinction of the men who freely and 

 deliberately offered up their lives on the field for the freedom and re- 

 nown of their country and the maintenance of her constitution was 

 considered by the nation a sacred duty not only of gratitude, but of 

 justice. She therefore made provision that the memory of such citi- 

 zens be fittingly celebrated by orations and perpetuated by monuments. 

 Whether this custom originated at Athens with Solon, the sixth-cen- 

 tury lawgiver — as seems very probable — or shortly after the Persian 

 Wars (478 B.C.), it was, beyond question, the most laudable and val- 



1 Plutarch, "Apothegm." 



