Thalētas

Thalētas, poet from Gortyn in Crete who came to Sparta in the first half of the seventh century BC in order, it was said, to rid the Spartans of a plague (by appeasing the god Apollo with his poetry). There he composed paeans and hyporchemata for the festivals, using paeonic and cretic metres (see METRE, GREEK 1). Nothing of his work survives.