Tyrtaeus 5-7

Tyrtaeus 5-7 (read in the Discord intermediate group)

Tyrtaeus 5. our king Theopompus, through whom we conquered Messenia after twenty long years, and the Messenians retreated to Mt. Ithome.

Tyrtaeus 6. like hard-pressed donkeys under dire necessity they bring us half of all their crops

Tyrtaeus 7. mourning their masters, wives and husbands alike, when they die 

1) fr. 6 and 7 from Pausanias, who uses them as evidence of the Spartans' 'wanton punishments' on the Messenians: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.+4.14

2) More comparisons to donkeys (cf. Semonides 7.43-9, discussed before) -- a common feature of archaic elegy, it seems like.

3) Are these poems (e.g. ἀναγκαίης ὑπὸ λυγρῆς) sympathetic to the Messenians? Certainly Pausanias quoted these lines because they seemed to him to be evidence of the Spartans' arrogance toward to the Messenians (ὕβριζον ἐς τοὺς Μεσσηνίους) -- and on their face these lines seem to evoke some sympathy for the Messenians. Maybe the Spartans delighted in the woes and travails of their fallen foes? Hard to imagine the overall poem these lines are from.