Like the sagacious inmate of the seas,[1]
That an accommodating colour brings,
Conforming to the rock to which he clings:
With every change of place changing his hue;
The model for a statesman such as you."—(F.)
Perhaps the clue to this riddle is, that circumstances about this time drove Theognis into a more pronounced course,—as men get desperate when they lose those possessions which, whilst intact, justify them in being choice, and conservative, and exclusive. Either in a fresh political revolution and a new partition of the lands of the republic, or, as Mr Grote thinks, in a movement in favour of a single-headed despot accomplished by some of Theognis's own party, who were sick of the rule of the "bad rich," he lost his estate whilst absent on an unfortunate voyage. Thenceforth he is a conspirator at work to recover his confiscated lands by a counter-revolution: thenceforth his verses are a mixture of schemes for revenge, of murmurs against Providence, and of suspicion of the comrades whose partisanship he hoped might yet reinstate the old possessors of property. The two or three fragments which refer more or less directly to this loss may be given together. Here is one which speaks to the extent and nature of it:—
Has saved a remnant: all the rest is gone
- ↑ The creature referred to is the Sea-Polypus—Sepia Octopodia of Linnæus—which is referred to in Hesiod's 'Works and Days' (524) under the epithet of "the boneless."
