Chapter VIII: The Gnomic Poets (1)

Definition of the Term Gnomic.--The Elegiac Metre.--The
Age of the Despots in Greece.--Three Periods in
Elegiac Poetry: the Martial, the Erotic, the
Gnomic.--Callinus.--Tyrtæus.--Mimnermus.--His
Epicurean Philosophy of Life.--Solon.--The
Salaminian Verses.--Doctrine of Hereditary
Guilt.--Greek Melancholy.--Phocylides.--His Bourgeois
Intellect.--Xenophanes.--Theognis.--The Politics
of Megara.--Cyrnus.--Precepts upon Education and
Conduct in Public and Private Life.--The Biography of
Theognis.--Dorian Clubs.--Lamentations over the Decay of
Youth and Beauty.

The term Gnomic, when applied to a certain number of Greek poets, is arbitrary. There is no definite principle for rejecting some and including others in the class. It has, however, been usual to apply this name to Solon, Phocylides, Theognis, and Simonides of Ceos. Yet there seems no reason to exclude some portions of Callinus, Tyrtæus, Mimnermus, and Xenophanes. These poets, it will be observed, are all writers of the elegy. Some of the lyric poets, however, and iambographers, such as Simonides of Amorgos and Archilochus, have strong claims for admission into the list. For, as the derivation of the name implies, gnomic poets are simply those who embody #gnômai#, or sententious maxims on life and morals, in their verse; and though we find that the most celebrated masters of this style composed elegies, we yet may trace the thread of gnomic thought in almost all the writers of their time. Conversely, the most genuine authors of elegiac gnomes trespassed upon the domain of lyric poetry, and sang of love and wine and personal experience no less than of morality. In fact, the gnomic poets represent a period of Greek literature during which the old and simple forms of narrative poetry were giving way to lyrical composition on the one hand, and to meditative writing on the other; when the epical impulse had become extinct, and when the Greeks were beginning to think definitely. The elegy, which seems to have originated in Asia Minor, and to have been used almost exclusively by poets of the Ionian race for the expression of emotional and reflective sentiments, lent itself to this movement in the development of the Greek genius, and formed a sort of midway stage between the impassioned epic of the Homeric age and the no less impassioned poetry and prose of the Athenian age of gold.

Viewed in this light, the gnomic poets mark a transition from Homer and Hesiod to the dramatists and moralists of Attica. The ethical precepts inherent in the epos received from them a more direct and proverbial treatment; while they in turn prepared for the sophists, the orators, and Socrates.

This transitional period in the history of Greek literature, corresponding, as it does, to similar transitions in politics, religion, and morality, offers many points of interest. Before Homer, poetry had no historical past; but after the age of the epic, a long time elapsed before the vehicle of verse was exchanged for that of prose. Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles wrote poems upon nature in hexameters. Solon and Theognis committed their state-craft and ethics to elegiac couplets. Yet at the same time Heraclitus and the seven sages were developing the germs of prose, and preparing the way for Attic historians and philosophers.

Again, whereas Homer introduces us to a Hellas small in its extent, and scarcely separated from surrounding tribes, we find in the transitional period that the strength and splendor of the Greek race are dissipated over distant colonies, Hellenic civilization standing out in definite relief against adjacent barbarism. The first lyrical and elegiac poets come from the islands of the Archipelago, or from the shores of Asia Minor. The first dramatists of note are Sicilian. Italy and Sicily afford a home to the metaphysical poets, while the philosophers of the Ionian sect flourish at Ephesus and Miletus.

Corresponding to this change in the distribution of the race, a change was taking place in the governments of the states. The hereditary monarchies of Homer's age have disappeared, and, after passing through a period of oligarchical supremacy, have given place to tyrannies. The tyrants of Miletus and of Agrigentum, rising from the aristocracy itself; those of Corinth, Athens, and Megara, owing their power to popular favor; others, like Cylon, flourishing awhile by force of mere audacity and skill; others, again, like Pittacus of Mitylene, using the rights of their dictatorship for the public benefit, had this one point in common--it was the interest of all of them to destroy the traditional prejudices of the race, to gather a powerful and splendid court around them, to patronize art, to cultivate diplomacy, and to attach men of ability to their persons. As the barons of feudalism encouraged the romances of the Niebelungen, Carlovingian, and Arthurian cycles, so the hereditary monarchies had caused the cyclical epos to flourish. It was not for the interest of the tyrants to revive Homeric legends, but rather to banish from the State all traces of the chivalrous past. With this view Cleisthenes of Sicyon put down the worship of Adrastus, and parodied the heroic names of the three tribes. Poetry, thus separated from the fabulous past, sought its subjects in the present--in personal experience, in pleasure, in politics, in questions of diplomacy, in epigrammatic morality.

Such, then, was the period during which the gnomic poets flourished--a period of courts and tyrannies, of colonial prosperity, of political animation, of social intrigue, of intellectual development, of religious transformation, of change and uncertainty in every department. Behind them lay primitive Homeric Hellas; before them, at no great distance, was the time when the Greek genius would find its home in Athens. Poetry and science were then to be distinguished; the philosophers, historians, and orators were to make a subtle and splendid instrument of Greek prose; the dramatists were to develop the choric and dialectic beauty of the Greek language to its highest possible perfection; tyrannies were to be abolished, and the political energies of Hellas to be absorbed in the one great struggle between the Dorian and Ionian families. But in the age of gnomic poetry these changes were still future; and though the mutations of Greek history were accomplished with unparalleled rapidity, we yet may draw certain lines and say, Here was a breathing-time of indecision and suspense; this period was the eve before a mighty revolution. I propose, therefore, to consider the gnomic poets as the representatives, to some extent, of such an age, and as exponents of the rudimentary, social, and political philosophy of Greece before Socrates.

Three periods may be marked in the development of the early Greek elegiac poetry--the Martial, the Erotic, and the Gnomic. Callinus and Tyrtæus are the two great names by which the first is distinguished. Mimnermus gave a new direction to this style of composition, fitting the couplet, which had formerly been used for military and patriotic purposes, to amatory and convivial strains.[49] In after-years it never lost the impress of his genius; so that Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius may be regarded as the lineal descendants of the Colophonian bard. Solon at a later date applied the elegiac measure to severer subjects. He was the first, perhaps, to use it for purely gnomic purposes, maintaining, however, the martial spirit in his Salaminian verses, and imitating the example of Mimnermus in his lighter compositions. Phocylides, to judge by the scanty fragments which we possess of his poems, was almost wholly gnomic in his character. But Theognis, who is the latest and most important of the elegiac writers of this period, combined the political, didactic, and erotic qualities to a remarkable degree. As a poet, Simonides was greater than any of those whom I have named; but his claims to rank among the sententious philosophers rest more upon the fragments of his lyrics than upon the elegiac epitaphs for which he was so justly famed.

These are the poets of whom I intend to speak in detail. Taken together with Homer and Hesiod, their works formed the body of a Greek youth's education at the time when Gorgias and Hippias were lecturing at Athens. From them the contemporaries of Pericles, when boys, had learned the rules of good society, of gentlemanly breeding, of practical morality, of worldly wisdom. Their saws and precepts were on the lips of the learned and the vulgar; wise men used them as the theses for subtle arguments or the texts for oratorical discourses. Public speakers quoted them as Scripture might be quoted in a synod of the clergy. They pointed remarks in after-dinner conversation or upon the market-place. Polemarchus, for instance, in Plato's _Republic_, starts the dialogue on Justice by a maxim of Simonides. Isocrates, the Rhetor, alludes to them as being "the best counsellors in respect of human affairs;" and Xenophon terms the gnomes of Theognis "a comprehensive treatise concerning men." Having been used so commonly and largely by the instructors of youth, and by men of all conditions, it was natural that these elegies should be collected into one compendious form, and that passages of a gnomic tendency should be extracted from larger poems on different subjects. In this way a body of sententious poetry grew up and received the traditional authority of Solon, Phocylides, Simonides, and Theognis. But in the process of compilation confusion and mistakes of all kinds occurred, so that the same couplets were often attributed to several authors. To bear this in mind at the outset is a matter of some moment; for at this distance of time it is no longer possible to decide the canon of the several elegists with accuracy. In dealing with them, we must, therefore, not forget that we are handling masses of heterogeneous materials roughly assigned to a few great names.

The earliest elegiac poet was Callinus, a native of Ephesus, between the years 730 and 678 B.C. His poems consist almost exclusively of exhortations to bravery in battle. "How long will ye lie idle?" he exclaims; "put on your valor; up to the fight, for war is in the land!" He discourses in a bold and manly strain upon the certainty of death, and the glory of facing it in defence of home and country, winding up with this noble sentiment: "The whole people mourns and sorrows for the death of a brave-hearted man; and while he lives he is the peer of demigods." The lines of Tyrtæus, whose prominent part during the second Messenian war is the subject of a well-known legend, embody the same martial and patriotic sentiments in even more masculine verse.

It would be alien from my purpose to dwell long upon these military poems, since the only gnomic character which they display is the encouragement of a heightened honor, unselfishness, indifference to gain, devotion to the State, and love of public fame. Yet the moment in the history of Hellas represented by Tyrtæus, the leader whose voice in the battle-field was like a clarion to his manly Spartans, and in the council-chamber was a whisper of Athene quelling strife, is so interesting that I cannot omit him in this place. "Never," to use the words of Müller, "was the duty and the honor of bravery impressed on the youth of a nation with so much beauty and force of language, by such natural and touching motives." If of a truth it be, as Milton says, the function of the poet "to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility," then Tyrtæus, less by his specific maxims than by the spirit that his verses breathe, deserves an honored place among the bards whom Aristotle would have classed as #êthikôtatoi#, most serviceable for the formation of a virile and powerful temperament, most suited for the education of Greek youth. The following translation stands as Thomas Campbell made it from a martial elegy ascribed to the bard of Lacedæmon:[50]

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.

Stain of his breed! dishonoring manhood's form,
All ills shall cleave to him: affliction's storm
Shall blind him wandering in the vale of years,
Till, lost to all but ignominious fears,
He shall not blush to leave a recreant's name,
And children, like himself, inured to shame.

But we will combat for our fathers' land,
And we will drain the life-blood where we stand,
To save our children:--fight ye side by side,
And serried close, ye men of youthful pride,
Disdaining fear, and deeming light the cost
Of life itself in glorious battle lost.

Leave not our sires to stem the unequal fight,
Whose limbs are nerved no more with buoyant might;
Nor, lagging backward, let the younger breast
Permit the man of age (a sight unblest)
To welter in the combat's foremost thrust,
His hoary head dishevell'd in the dust,
And venerable bosom bleeding bare.
But youth's fair form, though fallen, is ever fair,
And beautiful in death the boy appears,
The hero boy, that dies in blooming years:
In man's regret he lives, and woman's tears;
More sacred than in life, and lovelier far,
For having perished in the front of war.[51]

Strangely different are the elegies of Mimnermus, the poet of Colophon, who flourished towards the end of the seventh century B.C.[52] His name has passed into a proverb for luxurious verse, saddened by reflections on the fleeting joys of youth, and on the sure and steady progress of old age and death. Tyrtæus, though a native of Attica, wrote for Spartans at war with a strong nation; Mimnermus was born and lived among Ionian Greeks emasculated by barbarian control and by contact with the soft Lydians. It was of these Colophonians that Xenophanes, a native poet, said, "Instructed in vain luxury by the Lydians, they trailed their robes of purple through the streets, with haughty looks, proud of their flowing locks bedewed with curious essences and oils." For such a people the exquisitely soft and musical verses of Mimnermus, pervaded by a tone of lingering regret, were exactly suited. They breathe the air of sunny gardens and cool banquet-rooms, in which we picture to ourselves the poet lingering out a pensive life, endeavoring to crowd his hours with pleasures of all kinds, yet ever haunted and made fretful among his roses by the thought of wrinkles and death. "When your youth is gone," he says, "however beautiful you may have been, you lose the reverence of your children and the regard of your friends." "More hideous is old age than death. It reduces the handsome and the plain man to one level--cares attend it--the senses and the intellects get deadened--a man is forgotten and put out of the way." The Greek sentiment of hatred for old age is well expressed in one epithet which Mimnermus employs--#amorphon#, _formless_. The Greeks detested the ugliness and loss of grace which declining years bring with them almost more than weakened powers or the approach of death. Nay, "when the flower of youth is past," says Mimnermus, "it is best to die at once." Men are like herbs, which flourish for a while in sunshine--then comes the winter of old age, with poverty or disease, or lack of children. His feeling for the charm of youth was intense; he expressed it in language that reminds us of the fervency of Sappho: "Down my flesh the sweat runs in rivers, and I tremble when I see the flower of my equals in age gladsome and beautiful."

This tender and regretful strain is repeated by Mimnermus with a monotonous, almost pathetic persistency, as if the one thought of inevitable age oppressed him like a nightmare day and night. His delight in the goodliness of youth and manhood is so acute, and his enjoyment of existence is so exquisite, that he shrinks with loathing from the doom imposed on all things mortal to decline and wither. "May I complete my life without disease or cares, and may death strike me at my sixtieth year!" Such is the prayer he utters, feeling, probably, that up to sixty the senses may still afford him some enjoyment, and that, after they are blunted, there is nothing left for man worth living for. In all this, Mimnermus was true to one type of the Greek character. I shall have occasion farther on to revert to this subject, and to dwell again upon the fascination which the flower of youth possessed for the Greeks, and the horror with which the ugliness of age inspired them.[53] That some escaped this kind of despair, which to us appears unmanly, may be gathered from the beautiful discourse upon old age with which the _Republic_ of Plato opens. Mimnermus, however, belonged to a class of men different from Cephalus: nowhere in the whole range of literature can be found a more perfect specimen of unmitigated _ennui_.[54] In his verse we trace the prostrate tone of the Oriental, combined with Greek delicacy of intellect and artistic expression. The following passage may be cited as at once illustrative of his peculiar lamentation, and also of his poetical merits:

What's life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
When to the gold-haired goddess cold am I,
When love and love's soft gifts no more delight me,
Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die!
Ah! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth;
On men and maids they beautifully smile:
But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth,
Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile:
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
Scarce reck the very sunshine to behold--
Unloved by youths, of every maid the scorn--
So hard a lot God lays upon the old.[55]

We are not surprised to hear that the fragments of Mimnermus belonged to a series of elegies addressed to a flute-player called Nanno.[56] They are worthy of such a subject. Nanno, according to one account, did not return the passion of the poet.

In Mimnermus, however luxurious he may have been, we yet observe a vein of meditation upon life and destiny which prepares us for the more distinctly gnomic poets. Considered in the light of Greek philosophy, Mimnermus anticipates the ethical teaching of the Hedonists and Epicureans. In other words, he represents a genuine view of life adopted by the Greeks. Horace refers to him as an authority in these well-known lines:

Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque
Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque;[57]

on which the scholiast observed that the elegiac poet "agreed with the sect of the Epicureans."

Next to Mimnermus in point of time is Solon. Perhaps the verses of this great man were among his least important productions. Yet their value, in illustrating the history of Athens, would have been inestimable, had they been preserved to us in a more perfect state. "There is hardly anything," says Grote, "more to be deplored, amidst the lost treasures of the Grecian mind, than the poems of Solon; for we see by the remaining fragments that they contained notices of the public and social phenomena before him, which he was compelled attentively to study, blended with the touching expression of his own personal feelings, in the post, alike honorable and difficult, to which the confidence of his countrymen had exalted him." The interest of Solon as a gnomic poet is derived chiefly from the fact that he was reckoned one of the seven wise men of Greece, that he was one of the two most distinguished Nomothetæ of Hellas, that he is said to have conversed familiarly with the great Lydian monarch, and that he endeavored at Athens to resist the growing tyranny of Pisistratus. Thus Solon bore a prominent part in all the most important affairs of the period to which the gnomic poetry belongs. Its politics, diplomacy, and social theories, its constitutional systems and philosophy, were perfectly familiar to him, and received a strong impress from his vigorous mind. It is thought that his poems belong to an early period of his life; yet they embody the same sentiments as those which Herodotus refers to his old age, and express in the looser form of elegiac verse the gist of apothegms ascribed to him as one of the seven sages.

Literature and politics were cultivated together at this period among the Greeks; philosophy was gained in actual life and by commerce with men of all descriptions. The part which Tyrtæus, Alcæus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, and Archilochus played in the history of their states need not be more than alluded to. Simonides of Amorgos founded a colony; Theognis represented a large and important party. But Solon, in a truer sense than any of these men, combined decisive action in public life with letters. Nor is it, perhaps, necessary to agree with Grote in depreciating the poetical value of his verses. Some of them are very fine and forcible. The description, for example, of the storm which sweeps away the clouds, and leaves a sunny sky (Frag. 13, ed. Bergk), is full of noble imagery.

The first three fragments of Solon's elegies form part of the ode recited by him in the market-place of Athens, when he braved the penalty of death, and urged his fellow-citizens "to rise and fight for the sweet isle of Salamis." These lines are followed by a considerable fragment of great importance, describing the misery of ill-governed and seditious Athens. Among the sayings attributed to Solon (Diog. Laer., i. 63) is one that gives the keynote to this poem. When asked what made an orderly and well-constituted state, he answered, "When the people obey the rulers, and the rulers obey the laws." The paraphrase which I subjoin exhibits in strong contrast the difference between Dysnomia and Eunomia, as conceived by the Athenian lawgiver. Demosthenes, who used the name of Solon on all occasions with imposing rhetorical effect, quotes these lines in a celebrated passage of the speech _De Fals. Leg._, 254: "The citizens seek to overthrow the state by love of money, by following indulgent and self-seeking demagogues, who neglect religion and pervert the riches of the temples. Yet justice, silent but all-seeing, will in time bring vengeance on them for these things. War, want, civil discord, slavery, are at our gates; and all these evils threaten Athens because of her lawlessness. Whereas good laws and government set all the state in order, chain the hands of evil-doers, make rough places plain, subdue insolence, and blast the budding flowers of Até, set straight the crooked ways of tortuous law, root out sedition, quell the rage of strife; under their good influence all things are fair and wise with men." Thus early and emphatically was the notion of just balance enunciated among the Greeks. It formed the ruling principle of their philosophy as well as of their politics; for the #mêden agan# (nothing overmuch) of Solon corresponded to the #metron# (measure) of the Ionic speculators, and contained within itself the germ of Aristotle's ethical system, no less than of the political philosophy of Plato's _Republic_.

In the fifth and sixth fragments Solon describes the amount of power he would wish to see intrusted to the Athenian Demus; in the ninth, he prophesies the advent of a despot: "From storm-clouds descend furious snow and hail, and thunder is born of bright lightning; so great men produce the overthrow of states, and into the bondage of a despot's power the people fall unwittingly. Easy it is to raise the storm, but hard to curb the whirlwind; yet must we now take thought of all these things." Fragment the second contains a farther warning on the subject of impending tyranny. The power of Pisistratus was growing to a head, and Solon told the Athenians that if he proved despotic, they would have no one but themselves to blame for it.

The remaining fragments of Solonian poetry are more purely meditative. "Bright daughters of Memory and Olympian Zeus," he begins, "Pierian Muses! hear my prayer. Grant me wealth from the blessed gods, and from all men a good name. May I be sweet to my friend and bitter to my foe; revered by the one and dreaded by the other. Money I desire, but no ill-gotten gain: for the wealth that the gods give lasts, and fleets not away; but the fruits of insolence and crime bring vengeance--sure, though slow. Zeus seeth all things, and like a wind scattering the clouds, which shakes the deep places of the sea and rages over the corn-land, and comes at last to heaven, the seat of gods, and makes a clear sky to be seen, whereupon the sun breaks out in glory, and the clouds are gone--so is the vengeance of Zeus. He may seem to forget, but sooner or later he strikes; perchance the guilty man escapes, yet his blameless children or remote posterity pay the penalty." Two points are noticeable in this passage--first, the dread of ill-gotten gain; and secondly, the conception of implacable justice. There was nothing which the Greeks more dreaded and detested than wealth procured by fraud. They were so sensitive upon this point that even Plato and Aristotle regarded usury as criminal, unnatural, and sure to bring calamity upon the money-lender. Thus Chilon, the Lacedæmonian sage, is reported to have said, "Choose loss rather than dishonorable gain; for the one will hurt you for the moment, the other will never cease to be a curse." There are few of the seven sages who have not at least one maxim bearing on this point. It would seem as if the conscience of humanity were touched at a very early period by superstitious scruples of this kind. The Jewish law contains warnings similar to those of Solon; and among our own people it has been commonly believed that wealth unlawfully acquired, money taken from the devil, or property wrested from the Church, is disastrous to its owner, and incapable of being long retained in the possession of his family. Theognis expresses nearly the same sentiments as Solon in the following verses: "He who gets wealth from Zeus by just means, and with hands unstained, will not lose it; but if he acquire it wrongfully, covetously, or by false swearing, though it may seem at first to bring him gain, at last it turns to calamity, and the mind of Heaven prevails. But these things deceive men, for the blessed gods do not always take vengeance on crime at the moment of its being committed; but one man in his person pays for a bad deed, another leaves disaster hanging over his own children, a third avoids justice by death."

Both Solon and Theognis, it will be observed, express emphatically their belief in a vengeance of Heaven falling upon the children, and the children's children, of offenders. This conception of doom received its most splendid illustration at the hands of the tragic poets, and led philosophers like Empedocles to devise systems of expiation and purification, by means of which ancestral guilt might be purged away, and the soul be restored to its pristine blamelessness. Theognis in another fragment (731-752) discusses the doctrine, and calls in question its justice. He takes it for granted, as a thing too obvious to be disputed, that children suffer for their father's sin, and argues with Zeus about the abstract right and policy of this law, suggesting that its severity is enough to make men withdraw their allegiance from such unjust governors. The inequality of the divine rule had appeared in the same light to Hesiod and Homer (see _Iliad_, xiii. 631; Hesiod, _Op. et Dies_, 270). But it is in the gnomic poets that we first discover a tendency to return and reason upon such questions: the wedge of philosophical scepticism was being inserted into the old beliefs of the Greek race. In some respects these gnomic poets present even a more gloomy view of human destinies than the epic poets. Solon says, "It is fate that bringeth good and bad to men; nor can the gifts of the immortals be refused;" and in Theognis we find, "No man is either wealthy or poor, mean or noble, without the help of the gods." ... "Pray to the gods; naught happens to man of good or ill without the gods." ... "No one, Cyrnus, is himself the cause of loss and gain; but of both these the gods are givers."[58] It would be easy to multiply passages where the same conception of the divine government as that for which Plato (_Rep._, p. 379) blamed Homer is set forth; but the gnomic poets go beyond this simple view. They seem to regard Heaven as a jealous power, and superstitiously believe all changes of fortune to be produced by the operation of a god anxious to delude human expectations. This theology lies at the base of the Solonian maxim, that you ought not to judge of a man's happiness until his death; "for," in the language of Herodotus, "there are many to whom God has first displayed good-fortune, and whom he afterwards has rooted up and overthrown."

Thus Solon moralizes in his elegies upon the vicissitudes of life: "Danger lies everywhere, nor can a man say where he will end when he begins; for he who thinks to do well, without fore-thought, comes to grief; and often when a man is doing ill, Heaven sends him good-luck, and he ends prosperously." It must, however, be observed that Solon in no passage of his elegiac poems alludes distinctly to the intervention of a jealous or malicious destiny. He is rather deeply impressed with the uncertainty of human affairs--an uncertainty which the events of his own life amply illustrated, and which he saw displayed in every town about him. Simonides repeats the same strain of despondency, dwelling (Frag. 2, ed. Gaisford) upon the mutabilities of life, and exclaiming with a kind of horror: "One hideous Charybdis swallows all things--wealth and mighty virtue."

At this period in Greece the old simplicity of life was passing away, and philosophy had not yet revealed her broader horizons, her loftier aims, and her rational sources of content. We have seen how Mimnermus bemoaned the woes of old age. Solon, whose manliness contrasts in every other respect with the effeminacy and languor of the Colophonian poet, gave way to the same kind of melancholy when he cried, "No mortal man is truly blessed; but all are wretched whom the sun beholds." What can be more despairing than the lamentations of Simonides?--"Few and evil are our days of life; but everlasting is the sleep which we must sleep beneath the earth." ... "Small is the strength of man, and invincible are his sorrows; grief treads upon the heels of grief through his short life; and death, which no man shuns, hangs over him at last: to this bourn come the good and bad alike." In the midst of this uncertainty and gloom Theognis cannot find a rule of right conduct. "Nothing," he says, "is defined by Heaven for mortals, nor any way by which a man may walk and please immortal powers." Nor can we point to any more profoundly wretched expression of misery than the following elegy of the same poet: "It is best of all things for the sons of earth not to be born, nor to see the bright rays of the sun, or else after birth to pass as soon as possible the gates of death, and to lie deep down beneath a weight of earth." This sentiment is repeated by Bacchylides, and every student of Greek tragedy knows what splendid use has been made of it by Sophocles in one of the choruses of _Oedipus Coloneüs_. Afterwards it passed into a commonplace. Two Euripidean fragments embody it in words not very different from those of Theognis, and Cicero is said to have translated it. When we consider the uneasy and uncertain view of human life expressed in these passages, it seems wonderful that men, conscious of utter ignorance, and believing themselves, like Herodotus, to be the sport of almost malignant deities, could have grown so nobly and maintained so high a moral standard as that of the Greek race.[59]

The remaining fragments of Solon contain the celebrated lines upon the Life of Man, which he divided into ten periods of seven years. He rebuked Mimnermus for wishing to make sixty the term of human life, and bade him add another decade. We also possess some amorous verses of questionable character, supposed to have been written in his early youth. The prudes of antiquity were scandalized at Solon, a lawgiver and sage, for having penned these couplets. The libertines rejoiced to place so respectable a name upon their list of worthies. To the student of history they afford, in a compact form, some insight into the pursuits and objects of an Athenian man of pleasure. Plato quotes one couplet in the _Lysis_, and the author of the dialogue #peri erôtôn# (On Loves), attributed to Lucian, makes use of the same verses to prove that Solon was not exempt from the passion for which he is apologizing. Apuleius mentions another as "lascivissimus ille versus." It should be added that the most considerable of these elegies has also been ascribed to Theognis. The doubt of authorship which hangs over all the gnomic fragments warns us, therefore, to be cautious in ascribing them to Solon. At the same time there is no strong external or internal argument against their authenticity. Solon displays no asceticism in his poetry, or in anything that is recorded of his life or sayings.[60] It is probable that he lived as a Greek among Greeks, and was not ashamed of any of their social customs.

Passing from Solon to Phocylides, we find a somewhat different tone of social philosophy. Phocylides was a native of Miletus who lived between 550 and 490 B.C. If Mimnermus represents the effeminacy of the Asiatic Greeks, Phocylides displays a kind of prosaic worldly wisdom, for which the Ionians were celebrated. He is thoroughly _bourgeois_, to use a modern phrase; contented with material felicity, shrewd, safe in his opinions, and gifted with great common-sense. Here are some of his maxims: "First get your living, and then think of getting virtue." ... "What is the advantage of noble birth, if favor follow not the speech and counsel of a man?" ... "The middle classes are in many ways best off; I wish to be of middle rank in the State." Aristotle (_Pol._, iv. 9, 7) quotes the last of these sayings with approbation. It is a thoroughly Ionian sentiment. Two of his genuine fragments contain the germ of Greek ideas afterwards destined to be widely developed and applied by the greatest thinkers of Greece. One of these describes the Greek conception of a perfect State: "A small city, set upon a rock, and well governed, is better than all foolish Nineveh." We here recognize the practical wisdom and thorough solidity of Greek good-sense. Wealth, size, and splendor they regarded as stumbling-blocks and sources of weakness. To be compact and well governed expressed their ideal of social felicity. Plato in the _Republic_, and Aristotle in the _Politics_, carry the thought expressed in this couplet of Phocylides to its utmost logical consequences. Again he says, "In justice the whole of virtue exists entire." This verse, which has also been incorporated into the elegies of Theognis, was probably the common property of many early moralists. Aristotle quotes it in the fifth book of the _Ethics_, with the preface, #Dio kai paroimiazomenoi phamen# (wherefore in a proverb too we say). It might be placed as a motto on the first page of Plato's _Republic_, for justice is the architectonic virtue which maintains the health and safety of the State.

Phocylides enjoyed a high reputation among the ancients. Though few genuine fragments of his sayings have been handed down to us, there is a long and obviously spurious poem which bears his name. Some moralist of the Christian period has endeavored to claim for his half-Jewish precepts the sanction of a great and antique authority. The greater number of those which we may with safety accept as genuine are prefaced by the words #kai toge Phôkylideô# (and this too of Phocylides), forming an integral part of a hexameter. Phocylides was author of an epigram in imitation of one ascribed to Demodocus, which is chiefly interesting as having furnished Porson with the model of his well-known lines on Hermann. He also composed an epigrammatic satire on women, in which he compares them to four animals, a dog, a bee, a pig, and a horse, in the style of the poem by Simonides of Amorgos.

Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, and the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, has left some elegies of a gnomic character, which illustrate another point in the Ionian intellect. While Phocylides celebrated the superiority of comfort and the solid goods of life, Xenophanes endeavored to break down the prejudice in favor of mere physical advantages, and to assert the absolute pre-eminence of intellectual power. In his second fragment (ed. Bergk) he says, "You give all kinds of honors--precedence at festivals, pensions, and public maintenance--to runners, boxers, pentathletes, wrestlers, pancratists, and charioteers, who bear away the prize at Olympia; yet these men are not so worthy of reward as I am; for better than the strength of men or horses is our wisdom. What is the use of all this muscular development? It will not improve the constitution of the State or increase the revenue."[61] In this paraphrase, I have, for the sake of brevity, modernized the language of Xenophanes, while seeking to preserve the meaning of an elegy which admirably illustrates the principles of the Ionian race, and of Athens in particular, as contrasted with those of the Dorians. Plato, Aristotle, and all the political moralists of Greece blamed Sparta and Thebes for training mere soldiers and gymnasts, to the exclusion of intellectual culture; thus retarding the growth of their constitutions and forcing them to depend in all emergencies upon brute force. Had all Ionians been like Solon and Xenophanes, had there been nothing of Mimnermus or Phocylides in their character, then the Athenians might have avoided the contrary charge of effeminacy and ignobility of purpose and merely æsthetical superiority with which they have been taxed.

Contemporary with Phocylides was Theognis, a poet of whose gnomic elegies nearly fourteen hundred lines are still extant. Some of these are identical with verses of Solon, and of other writers; yet we need not suppose that Theognis was himself an imitator. It is far more probable that all the gnomic poets borrowed from the same sources, or embodied in their couplets maxims of common and proverbial wisdom. That Aristotle so regarded one of their most important aphorisms on the architectonic supremacy of justice, we have already seen. Besides, it is not certain on what principle the elegies which bear the names of different poets were assigned to them. Theognis covers more ground than any of his predecessors, and embraces a greater variety of subjects. It has never been imagined that the fragments we possess formed part of an elaborate and continuous poem. They rather seem to have been written as occasion served, in order to express the thoughts of the moment; while not a few included in the canon of Theognis belong probably to other poets. Many of them contain maxims of political wisdom, and rules for private conduct in the choice of friends; others seem to have been composed for the lyre, in praise of good society, or wine, or beauty; again we find discussions of moral questions, and prayers to the gods, mixed up with lamentations on the miseries of exile and poverty; a few throw light upon the personal history of Theognis; in all cases the majority are addressed to one person, called Cyrnus.[62]

Theognis was a noble, born at Megara about the middle of the sixth century B.C. His city, though traditionally subject to the yoke of Corinth, had under the influence of its aristocracy acquired independence. In course of time Theagenes, a demagogue, gained for himself despotical supremacy, and exiled the members of the old nobility from Megara. He, too, succumbed to popular force, and for many years a struggle was maintained between the democratic party, whom Theognis persistently styles #kakoi# and #deiloi# (bad and cowardly), and the aristocracy, whom he calls #agathoi# and #esthloi# (good and stanch). Theognis himself, as far as we can gather from the fragments, spent a long portion of his life in exile from Megara; but before the period of his banishment he occupied the position of friend and counsellor to Cyrnus, who, though clearly younger than himself, seems to have been in some sense leader of the Megarian aristocracy. A large number of the maxims of Theognis on State-government are specially addressed to him.

Before proceeding to examine these elegies in detail, we may touch upon the subject of the friendship of Theognis for Cyrnus, which has been much misunderstood. It must be remembered that Theognis was the only Doric poet of the gnomic class--all those who have been hitherto mentioned belonging without exception to the Ionian family of the Greek race. We are not, therefore, surprised to find some purely Dorian qualities in the poetry of Theognis. Such, for instance, are the invocations to Phoebus and Artemis, with which our collection of fragments opens; but such, in a far more characteristic sense, is the whole relation of the poet to his friend. From time immemorial it had been the custom among the Dorian tribes for men distinguished in war or State-craft to select among the youths one comrade, who stood to them in the light of pupil and squire. In Crete this process of election was attended with rites of peculiar solemnity, and at Sparta the names of #eispnêlês# and #aïtês#, or "in-breather" and "listener," were given to the pair. They grew up together, the elder teaching the younger all he knew, and expecting to receive from him in return obedience and affection. In manhood they were not separated, but fought and sat in the assembly side by side, and were regarded in all points as each other's representatives. Thus a kind of chivalry was formed, which, like the modern chivalry of love and arms, as long as it remained within due limits, gave birth to nothing but honorable deeds and noble friendships, but which in more degenerate days became the curse and reproach of Hellas. There is every reason to believe that Theognis was united to Cyrnus in the purest bonds of Doric chivalry; and it is interesting to observe the kind of education which he gives his friend (see 1049-1054, Theogn., ed. Bergk). Boys in the Doric States were so soon separated from their home, and from the training of the family, that some substitute for the parental discipline and care was requisite. This the institution to which I have briefly alluded seems to have to some extent supplied. A Spartan or Cretan settlement resembled a large public school, in which the elder boys choose their fags, and teach them and protect them, in return for duty, service, and companionship.

Lines 87-100 describe the sincere and perfect affection, the truthfulness and forbearance, which the poet requires from Cyrnus. In another passage (1259-1270) he complains of the changeable character of the youth, and compares him to a skittish horse. One of his longest, and, in point of poetry, most beautiful elegies, celebrates the immortality which his songs will confer on Cyrnus (237-254). He tells his friend that he has given him wings to fly with over land and sea, that fair young men at festivals will sing of him to sweetly sounding pipes, and that even Hades shall not prevent him from wandering on wings of fame about the isles and land of Hellas so long as earth and sun endure. The lofty enthusiasm and confidence of these promises remind us of Shakespear's most pompous sonnets. Again, he bewails the difficulties and dangers of this kind of friendship (1353 and 1369), or entreats Cyrnus not to let malicious slanders interrupt their intimacy. In some cases we cannot acquit Theognis any more than Solon of licentiousness in the expression of his love. But the general tone of his language addressed to Cyrnus is so dignified and sober that we are inclined to think his looser verses may refer to another and more scandalous attachment.

The first elegy of great importance (43-69) describes the state of Megara when under the control of a democracy. It expresses the bitter hatred and contempt which the Greek nobles in a Dorian state felt for the Perioeci, or farmers of the neighboring country, whom they strove to keep beneath them, and to exclude from all political rights: "Cyrnus, this city is still a city, but the people are all changed, who some time since knew neither law nor justice, but wore goatskins, and dwelt like deer beyond the walls. Now they are noble, son of Polypas; and the brave of heretofore are base. Who can endure to look upon these things?" Again he says (1109-1114), "The nobles of old days are now made base, and the base are noble, ... a man of birth takes his bride from a low man's house." In another place he complains that the rabble rule the State with monstrous laws, that the sense of shame has perished, and that impudence and insolence lord it over the land (289-292). In these perilous times he compares the State to a ship managed by incompetent and unruly mariners: the waves are breaking over her, but the sailors prevent the good pilot from guiding her helm, while they make pillage of the common good (667-682). This simile bears a striking resemblance to the passage of the _Republic_ in which Plato compares a state possessed by demagogues and the mob to an ill-governed ship. Lastly, says Theognis, "Porters rule, and the nobles are subject to the base." In this state of disorder the very principles of Dorian society are neglected. Money is regarded as the charter of nobility, and no attempts are made to maintain a generous breed of citizens. "We are careful," he says (183-196), "to select the best race of horses and the like, but a noble man doubts not about marrying a mean woman if she bring him money; nor does a woman reject the suit of a mean man if he be rich. Wealth is honored; wealth has confused our blood." This passage has great interest, both as showing the old prejudices of the Dorian aristocracy, and also as proving that a new order of things was beginning in Greece. Even the Dorian States could not resist the progress of commerce and republican institutions; and little Megara, situated between mercantile Corinth and democratic Athens, had but small strength to stem the tide. But the party of Theognis were not always out of power. When Cyrnus and his friends held sway in Megara, he gives them this advice (847-850): "Trample on the empty-headed rabble; strike them with the stinging goad; and put a galling yoke upon their neck; for never shall you find so despot-loving a demus in the whole earth." That he had frequent cause to apprehend the rising of some tyrant from the body of the people may be noticed in the fragments. Among the earliest of these in our arrangement (39-42) occurs this elegy: "Cyrnus, this city is pregnant; but I fear that it will bring forth a man to chastise our evil violence." He then proceeds to lay down the axioms of the oligarchical State theory: the nobility, he says, never ruined a city; it is only when base leaders get the upper-hand, and wrest justice in order to indulge the populace and make their own gain, that civil dissension and ruin ensue. Tyrants were as hateful to the true oligarchs as a democracy, and Theognis in one place actually advises tyrannicide: "To lay low a despot who consumes the people is no sin, and will not be punished by the gods" (1181). This sentiment corresponds with the couplet of Simonides on Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and with the apothegms of several of the sages.

Theognis, seeing Cyrnus environed with political difficulties, thought fit to furnish him with rules of conduct. He was very particular about the choice of proper friends. One elegy (31-38), in which he discourses on the desirability of consorting with none but the best company, and of avoiding the contagion of low comrades, attained a wide celebrity among the Greeks. So much of their life was spent in public, and so much of their education depended on society, that the question of social intercourse was one of paramount importance. Plato in the _Meno_, Xenophon in his _Memorabilia_, and Aristotle in the ninth book of the _Ethics_, all make use of these verses: "Come not into the company of bad men, but cling always to the good; eat and drink with them; sit with them, and seek to please those who have great power. For from the noble you will learn what is noble; but if you mix with base men you will lose the wits you have." It must always be borne in mind that by #esthloi# and #agathoi# Theognis meant the men of his own party. The "good" and "noble" were men of birth, wealth, breeding, and power, on whom, by prejudice and habit, he conferred these moral titles. In course of time, however, as the words acquired a more ethical significance, the philosophers were able to appropriate maxims of worldly prudence to their own more elevated purposes; nor were they even in the times of Theognis other than ambiguous, for the identification of aristocratic position and moral worth was so conventionally complete that words which were intended to be taken in the one sense had an equal application in the other. In another elegy (305-308) Theognis repeats this advice, when he observes that no one is born utterly bad by nature, but that he contracts habits of depravity from his associates. Here it is obvious how much of ethical meaning the words "good" and "bad" involved, even in the times of the Megarian poet, and how vastly important he considered the society of well-bred companions to be in the formation of character. A different view of moral habits seems to be taken in another fragment (429-438), where Theognis attributes more influence to nature than to training: "To beget and rear a child," he says, "is easier than to instil good principles. No one ever devised means for making fools wise, or bad men good. If Heaven had given to the sons of Æsculapius the gift of healing wickedness and folly, great fees would they have earned. If you could fashion or insert what minds you liked, good men would never have bad sons. But no amount of teaching will make a bad man good." These verses are quoted both by Plato and Aristotle, with whose inquiries on the subject of Education _versus_ Nature, of #trophê# as opposed to #physis#, they had, of course, considerable correspondence.