Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/142

120 120 HISTORY OF THE alone constitute an elegy. For the unimpassioned enunciation of moral sentences, the hexameter remained the most suitable form : hence the sayings of Phocylides of Miletus (about Olymp. 60. B.C. 540), with the perpetually recurring introduction " This, too, is a saying of Phocy- lides," appear, from the genuine remnants of them, to have consisted only of hexameters*. § 13. The remains of Theognts, on the other hand, belong both in matter and form to the elegy properly so called, although in all that respects their connexion and their character as works of art, they have come down to us in so unintelligible a shape, that at first sight the most copious remains of any Greek elegiac poet that we possess — for more than 1400 verses are preserved under the name of Theognis — would seem to throw less light on the character of the Greek elegy than the much scantier fragments of Solon and Tyrtceus. It appears that from the time of Xenophon, Theognis was considered chiefly as a teacher of wisdom and virtue, and that those parts of his writings which had a general application were far more prized than those which referred to some particular occasion. When, therefore, in later times it became the fashion to extract the general remarks and apophthegms from the poets, everything was rejected from Theognis, by which his elegies were limited to particular situations, or obtained an individual colour- ing ; and the gnomology or collection of apophthegms was formed, which, after various revisions and the interpolation of some fragments of other elegiac poets, is still extant. We know, however, that Theog- nis composed complete elegies, especially one to the Sicilian Megari- ans, who escaped with their lives at the siege of Megara by Gelon (Olymp. 74, 2. 483 B.C.); and the gnomic fragments themselves exhibit in numerous places the traces of poems which were composed for particular objects, and which on the whole could not have been very different from the elegies of Tyrtseus, Archilochus, and Solon. As in these poems of Theognis there is a perpetual reference to political sub- jects, it will be necessary first to cast a glance at the condition o, Megara in his time. § 14. Megara, the Doric neighbour of Athens, had, after its separation from Corinth, remained for a long time under the undisturbed domi- nion of a Doric nobility, which founded its claim to the exercise of the sovereign power both on its descent, and its possession of large landed estates. But before the legislation of Solon, Theagenes had raised him- self to absolute power over the Megarians by pretending to espouse he expresses warmth and fidelity to friends, are probably the fragment of an elegy. On the other hand, there is a distich which has the appearance of a jocular appendix to the yviofiui, almost of a self-parody : — K«( TOOl &ukuXioiv' AiPlOl XCCX0I' 0V% i |WEV, Oj 2' ofi' Havre, w>.r,v TlgoxXiovs, xa.) W^tx^ira Aipiog. (Gaisford, fragm. 5.;
 * Two distichs cited under the name of Phocylides, in which in the first person