Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/60

 44 HISTORY OF GREECE tier's reign at Corinth, we find Theagenes despot at Megara, who is also said to hare acquired his power by demagogic arts, as well as by violent aggressions against the rich proprietors, whose cattle he destroyed in their pastures by the side of the river. We are not told by what previous conduct on the part of the rich this hatred of the people had been earned, but Theagenes carried the popular feeling completely along with him, obtained by public vote a body of guards ostensibly for his personal safety, and em- ployed them to overthrow the oligarchy. 1 But he did not main- tain his power, even for his own life : a second revolution dethroned and expelled him ; on which occasion, after a short interval of temperate government, the people are said to have renewed in a still more marked way their antipathies against the rich ; banish- ing some of them with confiscation of property, intruding into the houses of others with demands for forced hospitality, and even passing a formal palintokia, or decree, to require from the rich who had lent money on interest, the refunding of all past interest paid to them by their debtors. 2 To appreciate correctly such a demand, we must recollect that the practice of taking in- terest for money lent was regarded by a large proportion of early ancient society with feelings of unqualified reprobation ; and it will be seen, when we come to the legislation of Solon, how much such violent reactionary feeling against the creditor was provoked by the antecedent working of the harsh law determining his rights. We hear in general terms of more than one revolution in the government of Megara, a disorderly democracy, subverted by returning oligarchical exiles, and these again unable long to main- tain themselves ; 3 but we are alike uninformed as to dates and details. And in respect to one of these struggles, we are admitted to the outpourings of a contemporary and a sufferer, the Me- garian poet Theognis. Unfortunately, his elegiac verses, as we possess them, are in a state so broken, incoherent, and interpolated, that we make out no distinct conception of the events which call them forth, still less, can we discover in the verses of Theognij 1 Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 5 ; Rhetor, i, 2, 7. 3 Aristot. Polit. iv, 12, 10 ; v, 2. 6 ; 4, 3.
 * Plutarch, Quacst. Graec. c. 18, p. 295.