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132 his poetry to violent democratic measures, such as the adoption of the periæei, or cultivators-without-political-rights, into the sovereign community; and, as might be imagined, in the case of one who was of the best blood and oldest stock, he constantly uses the term "the good" as a synonym for "the nobles," whilst the "bad and base" is his habitual expression to denote "the commonalty." In his point of view nothing brave and honourable was to be looked for from the latter, whilst nothing that was not so could possibly attach to the former. This distinction is a key to the due interpretation of his more political poems, and it accounts for much that strikes the reader as a hurtful and inexpedient prejudice on the part of the poet. For some time he would appear to have striven to preserve a neutrality, for which, as was to be expected, he got no credit from either side; but at last, whilst he was absent on a sea voyage, the "bad rich" resorted to a confiscation of his ancestral property, with an eye to redistribution among the commons. From this time forward he is found engaged in constant communications with Cyrnus, a young noble, who was evidently looked to as the coming man and saviour of his party; but the conspiracy, long in brewing, seems only to have come to a head to be summarily crushed, and the result is that Theognis has to retire into exile in Eubœa, Thebes, and Syracuse in succession. How he maintained himself in these places of refuge, turning his talents to account, and holding pretty staunchly to his principles, until a seasonable aid to the popular cause at the last-named sojourn, and a still more