Hesiod, and Theognis/Chapter 7
THEOGNIS.
CHAPTER I.
THEOGNIS IN YOUTH AND PROSPERITY.
With the life of Hesiod politics have little or no connection; in that of Theognis we find them playing an essential inseparable part. And it is curious that the very feature which both poets have in common, their subjectivity, is that which introduces us to this point of contrast and token of the ancient world's advancement—namely, that whereas Hesiod's political status is so unimportant as to be overlooked even by himself, with Theognis it occupies more space in his elegies than his social relations or his religious opinions. In fact, his personal and political life are so intermixed, that the internal evidence as to both must be collected in one skein, and cannot be separately unwound, unless at the risk of missing somewhat of the interest of his remains, which consists chiefly in the personality of the poet.
It is true that later Greek writers regarded Theognis as a teacher of wisdom and virtue, by means of detached maxims and apothegms in elegiac verse, and would probably have been loath to recognise any element in his poetry which was personal or limited to particular times and situations; yet it is now fully established that he was one of the same section of poets with Callinus, Tyrtæus, Solon, and Phocyllides, all of whom availed themselves of a form of versification, the original function of which was probably to express mournful sentiments, to inspire their countrymen with their own feelings as to the stirring themes of war and patriotism, of politics, and of love. With Theognis it is clear that the elegy was a song or poem sung at banquets or symposia after the libation, and between the pauses of drinking, to the sound of the flute; and, furthermore, that it was addressed not as elsewhere to the company at large, but to a single guest. Many such elegies were composed by him to friends and boon-companions, as may be inferred from his remains, and from the tradition which survives, that he wrote an elegy to the Sicilian Megarians on their escape from the siege of their city by Gelon (483 B.C.); but owing to the partiality of a later age for the maxims and moral sentiments with which these elegies were interspersed, and which, as we learn from Xenophon and Isocrates, were used in their day for educational purposes, the shape in which the poetry of Theognis has come down to us is as unlike the original form and drift as a handbook of maxims from Shakespeare is unlike an undoctored and un-Bowdlerised play. Thanks to the German editor Welcker, and to the Ingenious "restitution" of Hookham Frere, the original type of these poems has been approximately realised, and we are able, in a great measure, to connect the assorted links into a consistent and personal autobiography. For the clearer apprehension of this, it seems best to give a very brief sketch of the political condition of the poet's country at the time he flourished, and then to divide our notice of himself and his works into three epochs, defined and marked out by circumstances which gravely influenced his career and tone of thought.
The poet's fatherland, the Grecian, not Sicilian, Megara, after asserting its independence of Corinth, of which it had been a colony, fell under the sway of a Doric nobility, which ruled it in right of descent and of landed estates. But before the legislation of Solon, Theagenes, the father-in-law of Gelon, had become tyrant or despot of Megara, like Cypselus and Periander at Corinth, by feigned adoption of the popular cause. His ascendancy was about B.C. 630-600, and upon his overthrow the aristocratic oligarchy again got the upper hand for a brief space, until the commons rose against them, and succeeded in establishing a democracy of such anarchical tendency and character, that it was not long ere the expelled nobles were reinstated. The elegies of Theognis, who was born about 570 B.C., date from about the beginning of the democratic rule, and, as he belonged to the aristocracy, deplore the sufferings of his party, and the spoliation of their temples and dwellings by the poor, who no longer paid the interest of their debts. Frequent reference will be found in 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 seasonable douceur to the Corinthian general, paved the way to his recall to Megara, will be seen in the account we propose to give of the last epoch of his life, which is supposed to have lasted till beyond 480 B.C., as he distinctly in two places refers to the instant terror of a Median invasion. That life divides itself into the periods of his youth and prosperous estate, his clouded fortunes at home, and his long and wearisome exile. The remainder of this chapter will serve for a glance at the first period.
That our poet was of noble birth may be inferred from the confidence with which, in reply to an indignity put upon him in his exile at Thebes, to which we shall refer in due course, he asserts his descent from "noble Æthon," as if the very mention of the name would prove his rank to his contemporaries; and in the first fragment (according to the ingenious chronological arrangement of Frere, which we follow throughout), Theognis is found in the heyday of prosperity, praying Zeus, and Apollo, the special patron of his fatherland, to preserve his youth
In joyous easy years of peace and health."
Interpreting this language by its context, we learn that his ideal of joyous years was to frequent the banquets of his own class, and take his part in songs accompanied by the flute or lyre,—
This also is a most delightful thing.
Give me but ease and pleasure! what care I
For reputation or for property?"—(F.)
But we are not to suppose that such language as the last couplet wore so much the expression of his serious moods as of a gaiety rendered reckless by potations such as, we are obliged to confess, lent a not infrequent inspiration to his poetry. Theognis is, according to his own theory, quite en règle when he retires from a banquet
"Not absolutely drunk nor sober quite."
He glories in a state which he expresses by a Greek word, which seems to mean that of being fortified or steeled with wine, an ironical arming against the cares of life to which he saw no shame in resorting. And perhaps too implicit credence is not to be given to the professions of indifference to wealth and character, which are made by a poet who can realise in verse such an experience as is portrayed in the fragment we are about to cite:—
With wine: my senses are no more my own.
The ceiling and the walls are wheeling round![1]
But let me try! perhaps my feet are sound.
Let me retire with my remaining sense,
For fear of idle language and offence."—(F.)
In his more sober moments the poet could appreciate pursuits more congenial to his vocation and intellectual cultivation, as is seen in his apparently early thirst for knowledge, and discovery that such thirst does not admit of thorough satisfaction:—
Inadequate to satisfy the mind—
A craving eagerness remains behind;
Something is left for which we cannot rest,
And the last something always seems the best—
Something unknown, or something unpossest."—(F.)
One who could give vent to such a sentiment may be supposed to have laid up in youth a store of the best learning attainable; and the bent of his talents, which was towards vocal and instrumental music and composition of elegies, was so successfully followed that in time of need he was able to turn it to means of subsistence. Indeed, that he knew what was really the real secret of success in a concert or a feast is seen in a remark which he addressed to a certain Simonides (whom there is no reason to identify with the famous poet), recommending
Like a good concert, keeping time and measure;
Such entertainments give the truest pleasure."—(F.)
But the poet was able to preserve the health which he besought the gods to grant him, in spite of what we should call hard living, there are hints in his poetry that the "peace" which he coupled with it did not bless him uninterruptedly. In one of his earlier elegiac fragments there is a hint of a youthful passion, broken off by him in bitterness at the Megarian flirt's "love for every one." Such, at least, seems to be the interpretation of four lines which may be closely rendered,—
'Twas clear and sweet to my imagining.
'Tis turbid now. Of it no more I drink,
But hang o'er other stream or river-brink."—(D.)
He was determined, it seems, to be more discursive in his admiration for the future. How that plan succeeded does not appear, though in several passages he arrogates to himself a degree of experience as regards women, and match-making, and the like. In the end we have his word for it, that he proved his own maxim,—
Nothing can equal goodness in a wife."— (F.)
But this could not have been till long after he had suffered rejection of his suit for a damsel whose parents preferred a worse man—i.e., a plebeian—and had carried on secret relations with her after her "mating to a clown." His own account of this is curious, as its opening shows that he vented his chagrin on himself:—
A meaner man has bought the right to bide.
Poor cheer for me! To sate her parents' thirst
She seeks the well, and sure her heart will burst
In weeping for my love and lot accurst.
I meet her, clasp her neck, her lips I kiss,
And they responsive gently murmur this:
'A fair but luckless girl, my lot has been
To wed perforce the meanest of the mean.
Oft have I longed to burst the reins, and flee
From hateful yoke to freedom, love, and thee."
Perhaps, on the whole, he had no great reason to speak well of the sex, for in one place, as if he looked upon marriage, like friendship, as a lottery, he moralises to the effect—
Beforehand, like the cattle which you buy;
Nor human wit and wisdom, when you treat
For such a purchase, can escape deceit:
Fancy betrays us, and assists the cheat."—(F.)
But, if his witness is true, mercenary parents were as common of old as in our own day. He was led, both by his exclusiveness as an aristocrat, and his impatience of a mere money-standard of worth, to a disgust of—
Where price is everything: for money's sake
Men marry; women are in marriage given.
The churl or ruffian that in wealth has thriven
May match his offspring with the proudest race;
Thus everything is mixt, noble and base!"—(F.)
And that he did ponder the regeneration of society, and strive to fathom the depths of the education question agitated in the old world, we know from a passage in his elegies, which, though we have no clue to the time he wrote it, deserves to be given in this place, both as connected with his notions about birth, and as a set-off to the passages which, have led us to picture him as more or less of an easy liver:—
Morals and manners is beyond our reach;
To make the foolish wise, the wicked good,
That science yet was never understood.
The sons of Esculapius, if their art
Could remedy a perverse and wicked heart,
Might earn enormous wages! But in fact
The mind is not compounded and compact
Of precept and example; human art
In human nature has no share or part.
Hatred of vice, the fear of shame and sin,
Are things of native growth, not grafted in:
Else wives and worthy parents might correct
In children's hearts each error and defect:
Whereas we see them disappointed still,
No scheme nor artifice of human skill
Can rectify the passions or the will"—(F.) )
Not often, however, despite his sententiousness, which has been the cause of his metamorphose by posterity into a coiner of maxims for the use of schools and the instruction of life and morals, does Theognis muse in such a strain of seriousness. Oftener far his vein is bright and gay, as when he makes ready for a feast, which, if we are not mistaken, was destined to take most of the remainder of his "solid day."
The bright sun pauses in his pride and force,
Let us prepare to dine; and eat and drink
The best of everything that heart can think:
And let the shapely Spartan damsel fair
Bring with a rounded arm and graceful
Water to wash, and garlands for our hair
In spite of all the systems and the rules
Invented and observed by sickly fools,
Let us be brave, and resolutely drink;
Not minding if the Dog-star rise or sink."—(F.)
A very pretty vignette might be made of this, or of a kindred fragment that seems to belong to his later days. And to tell the truth, the poet's rule seems to have been that you should "live while you may." Whether, as has been surmised by Mr Frere, he refers to the catastrophe of Hipparchus or not, the four lines which follow indicate Theognis's conviction that everything is fated,—a conviction very conducive to enjoyment of the passing hour. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die':—
Can change the purpose of the powers of Heaven;
Whatever Fate ordains, danger or hurt,
Or death predestined, nothing can avert."—(F.)
This conviction, no doubt, to a great degree influenced the poet's indifference to the honours of a pompous funeral, for which, considering his birth and traditions, he might have cherished a weakness. But his tone of mind, we see, was such that he could anticipate no satisfaction from "hat-bands and scarves," or whatever else in his day represented handsome obsequies. When some great chief, perhaps a tyrant, perhaps one of the heads of his party at Megara, was to be borne to his long home with a solemn pageant, Theognis has no mind to take a part in it, and expresses his reasons in language wherein the Epicurean vein is no less conspicuous than the touching common-sense:—
The stately car, the purple canopies;
Much better pleased am I, remaining here,
With cheaper equipage, and better cheer.
A couch of thorns, or an embroidered bed,
Are matters of indifference to the dead."—(F.)
This old-world expression of the common-place that the grave levels all distinctions is not unlike, save that it lacks the similitude of life to a river, the stanzas on "Man's Life," by a Spanish poet, Don Jorge Manrique, translated by Longfellow:—
To that unfathomed boundless sea,
The silent grave!
Thither all earthy pomp and boast
Roll to be swallowed up and lost
In one dark wave.
Thither the brook pursues its way;
And tinkling rill.
There all are equal: side by side,
The poor man and the son of pride
Lie calm and still."
But before Theognis could give proof of this levelling change, he had a stormy career to fulfil, as we shall find in the next chapter.