Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/173

Rh advance towards making things pleasant with the other, and a first overture to the treaty he was desirous to negotiate with the victorious party.

But the bait, though specious, did not tempt those for whom it was designed. In another short fragment is recorded the outburst of the poet's disappointment at finding it "labour lost." He seems to have abandoned hope at last in the words—

But even a man without hope must live—that is, unless he terminate his woes by self-slaughter, a dernier ressort to which, to do him justice, Theognis makes no allusion. And so—it would seem because Thebes, though it gave sympathy and hospitality, did not give means of earning a subsistence to the Megarian refugees—we find him in the next fragment—the last of those addressed to Cyrnus—announcing a resolution to flee from poverty, the worst of miseries:—