Tyrtaeus's poetry is almost always interpreted teleologically, for signs of its subsequent impact on Spartan society. The similarities in meter and phrasing between Homeric epic and early elegy have encouraged this tendency, sometimes leading to dramatic conclusions about Tyrtaeus's significance. He has been called, for example, "the first poet of the Greek city state" and, in a similar vein, "he has recast the Homeric ideal of the single champion's "arete" (excellence) into the "arete" of the patriot". For some scholars, this is to credit Tyrtaeus with too much: his use of "arete" was not an advance on Homer's use of it but can still be interpreted as signifying "virtue" in the archaic sense of an "individual's power to achieve something" rather than as an anticipation of the classical sense of "moral excellence", familiar to Plato and others.