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With these laudable ambitions he pursued with profit his calling of "director of choral entertainments," until, it would seem, upon the incidence of a war between Hippocrates, the tyrant of Gela, and the Syracusans, he was induced to go out in the novel character of a champion of freedom to the battle of Helorus. When Corinth and Corcyra combined to deliver Syracuse from the siege which followed the loss of this battle, it is probable that the Corinthian deputies were surprised to find the poet, whom they had known as an oligarchist at Megara, transformed into a very passable democrat, and seeking their good offices, with regard to his restoration to his native city. These, however, he found could not be obtained except through a bribe; and accordingly, whilst he no doubt complied with the terms, he could not resist giving vent to his disgust in a poem wherein the Corinthian commander is likened to Sisyphus, and which ends with the bitter words—

It should seem that the bribe did pass, and that while the negotiations consequent upon it were pending, Theognis drew so near his home as friendly Lacedæmon, where he composed a pretty and Epicurean strain that tells its own story:—