to have been often noisy and Bacchanalian, we must suppose the Aristocratic Club at Megara to have been as busy in contemporary politics as the "Carlton" or the "Reform" in our general elections; and there are tokens that Theognis was a sleepless member of the Committee, although some of his confrères, of whom little more than the names survive, cared more for club-life than club-politics. There was one notable exception. In spite of the waywardness of youth, and the fickleness characteristic of one so petted and caressed by his friends, Cyrnus must have lent his ears and hands to various schemes of Theognis for upsetting the democracy, and restoring the ascendancy of the "wise and good." At times it is plain that Cyrnus considered himself to have a ground of offence against Theognis; and there are verses of the latter which bespeak recrimination and open rupture, though of course the poet compares himself to unalloyed gold, and considers his good faith stainless. The elder of the pair was probably tetchy and jealous, the younger changeable and volatile; but there is certainly no reason for supposing that Cyrnus's transference of his friendship to some other political chief resulted in either party-success or increase of personal distinction, for his name survives only in the elegiacs of Theognis, as indeed that poet has prophesied it would, in a fragment the key to which Hookham Frere finds in a comparison of bardic celebration with the glory resulting from an Olympic victory:—
Are borne triumphant on the wings I gave,
