CHAPTER 21

Solon and Theognis

Ewen Bowie

Singing elegy in symposia and reciting or performing iambic poetry were forms of entertainment not confined to the Aegean islands and the cities of Ionia, where in the mid-seventh century they are documented by Archilochus for Paros and Thasos, Callinus for Ephesus, Mimnermus for Smyrna, and Semonides for Samos and Amorgos. In the same generation Tyrtaeus exploited elegy, largely preserving its Ionian dialect, in Sparta, and it is likely that elegy was already sung in Attic symposia by ca. 740 BC, when a hexameter that remains among our earliest Greek alphabetic texts identifies an oinochoē as a prize for “whoever of all the dancers sports with greatest elegance.”1 But our first known compositions for performance in Attica are those of Solon half a century later than Tyrtaeus. Although some poems and fragments attributed to Solon may not be his,2 the incentives for fathering others’ poetry on him are much weaker than those which caused many later laws to be presented as “Solon’s,” and the discussion that follows assumes the attributed poetry to be genuine.

Solon

Like Archilochus, Solon was known both for his elegies and for his iamboi. His surviving iamboi, however, employ only two of the many meters used by Archilochus, the iambic trimeter and the closely related trochaic tetrameter catalectic, and they are used neither for vituperation nor for erotic narrative, whether graphic or delicately air-brushed, but are confined to political self-justification. Solon’s longest fragment (fr. 36), 28 iambic trimeters, transmitted in its entirety by the pseudo-Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians, but known also in part from quotations and paraphrases by Plutarch and Aelius Aristides, proudly claims that he had uprooted the boundary-markers (horoi) which enslaved the land and had brought back to Attica many citizens who had gone as slaves overseas. Personification and imagery raise the argument above the level of simple oratory:

συμμαρτυροίη ταῦτ’ ἂν ἐν δίκηι Χρόνου

μήτηρ μεγίστη δαιμόνων Ὀλυμπίων

ἄριστα, Γῆ μέλαινα, τῆς ἐγώ ποτε

ὅρους ἀνεῖλον πολλαχῆι πεπηγότας,

πρόσθεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευθέρη.

In the court of time I will have as my best witness the mighty mother of the Olympian gods, dark Earth, whose boundary markers fixed in many places I once removed; enslaved before, now she is free.

Solon fr. 36.3–7

A shorter tetrameter fragment (fr. 33, seven lines), quoted only by Plutarch in his Solon (14.9–15.1), but known to the pseudo-Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians (6.3–4), sets up a dialogue between Solon and his critics, whom he presents as damning him as stupid for not accepting the role of tyrant when it was within his grasp. It may be that it is in fragments of the same tetrameter poem that he defended his own actions (fr. 32, five lines) and vigorously attacked those of his critics (fr. 34, nine lines). These fragments’ content places them after Solon was archon, traditionally in 594/3 BC, and after the legislation that he enacted in or shortly after that archonship—laws applicable to rich and poor alike (fr. 36.18–20), and in particular what was later called the seisaththeia, “shaking off of burdens,” which seems to have released a significant sector of the population of Attica from some form of land-related servitude (fr. 36.6–10) and to have given some Athenians prosperity they had not dreamt of (fr. 37), while stopping short of full redistribution of land. It is possible that these iambics were intended for performance in symposia, initially sung to gatherings of like-minded friends, then percolating to other circles as they were re-performed there by someone who had heard them at Solon’s. But performance of some of Solon’s iambic poetry in some type of formal political meeting cannot be ruled out.3

For elegiac performances, however, in Solon’s case as in those of other early singers of elegy, the context of performance was predominantly or exclusively the symposium. That is indicated by the presence in the fragments of typically sympotic themes: gnomic wisdom like the Ten ages of man (fr. 27); the devaluation of wealth by comparison with the availability of ordinary physical pleasures (fr. 24); erotic desire (frr. 25 and 26); the sympotic game of challenging or capping another’s contribution, as Solon does the prayer of Mimnermus (now long dead) to live to the age of 60 (fr. 20); or the departure-song, in which Solon prays for prosperity for his host, Philocyprus, tyrant of Soli, and asks him to facilitate his own onward voyage. But preoccupation with Attica’s current social and political problems dominates the elegiac pieces that have survived, and alongside relatively unadorned political argument similar to that in his iambics (e.g., frr. 4 c, 5, 6) we find vehement and inspired rhetoric, pounding its audience with vivid and powerful images. A good example of more straightforward political argument is fr. 4.5–10:

αὐτοὶ δὲ φθείρειν μεγάλην πόλιν ἀφραδίηισιν

ἀστοὶ βούλονται χρήμασι πειθόμενοι,

δήμου θ’ ἡγεμόνων ἄδικος νόος, οἷσιν ἑτοῖμον

ὕβριος ἐκ μεγάλης ἄλγεα πολλὰ παθεῖν ·

οὐ γὰρ ἐπίστανται κατέχειν κόρον οὐδὲ παρούσας

εὐφροσύνας κοσμεῖν δαιτὸς ἐν ἡσυχίηι

But it is the citizens themselves who by their acts of mindlessness and subservience to possessions are willing to destroy a great city, and the mind of the people’s leaders is unjust; they are certain to suffer much pain as a result of their great arrogance. For they do not know how to restrain excess or to conduct in an orderly and peaceful manner the merrymaking of the banquet that they can now enjoy …

Solon fr. 4.5–10

Solon’s more poetic use of imagery, however, is best illustrated from his Prayer to the Muses, fr. 13, apparently complete at 76 lines.4 The singer opens with an address to these traditional patrons of poetic inspiration that might lead listeners to expect some form of narrative, but instead utters a prayer for prosperity, a good reputation, and a happy relationship to his friends. He prays that he may acquire wealth justly (as he does in different words in fr. 15) and depicts the blind folly (atē) that afflicts the violent and unjust, whom Zeus will suddenly punish either in person or through their children or later generations:

ὃν δ’ ἄνδρες τιμῶσιν ὑφ’ ὕβριος, οὐ κατὰ κόσμον

ἔρχεται, ἀλλ’ ἀδίκοις ἔργμασι πειθόμενος

οὐκ ἐθέλων ἕπεται, ταχέως δ’ ἀναμίσγεται ἄτηι ·

ἀρχῆς δ’ ἐξ ὀλίγης γίγνεται ὥστε πυρός,

φλαύρη μὲν τὸ πρῶτον, ἀνιηρὴ δὲ τελευτᾶι · 15

οὐ γὰρ δὴ<ν> θνητοῖς ὕβριος ἔργα πέλει,

ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς πάντων ἐφορᾶι τέλος, ἐξαπίνης δὲ

ὥστ’ ἄνεμος νεφέλας αἶψα διεσκέδασεν

ἠρινός, ὃς πόντου πολυκύμονος ἀτρυγέτοιο

πυθμένα κινήσας, γῆν κάτα πυροφόρον 20

δηιώσας καλὰ ἔργα θεῶν ἕδος αἰπὺν ἱκάνει

οὐρανόν, αἰθρίην δ’ αὖτις ἔθηκεν ἰδεῖν,

λάμπει δ’ ἠελίοιο μένος κατὰ πίονα γαῖαν

καλόν, ἀτὰρ νεφέων οὐδ’ ἓν ἔτ’ ἐστὶν ἰδεῖν.

τοιαύτη Ζηνὸς πέλεται τίσις … 25

…whereas wealth which men honour with violence comes in disorder, an unwilling attendant persuaded by unjust actions, and it is quickly mixed with ruin. Ruin has a small beginning, like that of fire, insignificant at first but grievous in the end, for mortals’ deeds of violence do not live long. Zeus oversees the outcome of everything, and suddenly, just as the clouds are quickly scattered by a spring wind which stirs up the bottom of the swelling and unharvested sea, ravages the lovely fields over the wheat-bearing land, reaches the gods’ precipitous seat in heaven, and again brings a cloudless sky to view; the strong sun shines in beauty over the fertile land and no longer can even a single cloud be seen—such is the punishment of Zeus.

Solon fr. 13.11–25

Two loosely connected priamel-type lists follow—the variety of human wishes and men’s diverse modes of seeking gain—before Solon closes his remarkably loosely constructed poem with repetition (in different forms) of the theme that injustice will be punished.

Another long piece (fr. 4), which its quotation by Demosthenes has shorn of its opening, criticizes the greedy and powerful whom Solon sees as chiefly responsible for civil unrest (stasis, cf. fr. 9.3), insists that this unrest harms everyone, with the poor actually sold overseas in chains, and praises well-ordered behavior (Eunomiē), forecasting (as in fr. 13) that injustice will be punished.

Three short fragments (1–3 W), from a poem we know from Plutarch was entitled Salamis, are quite different. They encourage Athenians to regain control of the island of Salamis, and may bring Solon’s poetry closer to the type of martial hortatory elegy that dominates the surviving work of Tyrtaeus and Callinus half a century earlier. With only eight of the elegy’s 100 lines surviving, however, its balance of martial exhortation and political argument cannot be determined. The ancient tradition that, to evade a ban on discussing Salamis, Solon feigned madness and rushed into the agora to perform them, is probably false.5

Given Solon’s iconic status in fifth- and fourth-century Athens it is likely that at least one collection or selection of his poems was made, but we have no actual evidence of this, far less any indications of just when or by whom it might have been done. We do know, however, that a few lines were included in the elegiac anthology that has been transmitted as The Elegies of Theognis, and to this and its eponymous poet I now turn.

Theognis

Almost 50 manuscripts preserve 1220 lines of elegiac poetry which they ascribe to Theognis, and which I shall follow others in calling the Theognidea. One early-tenth-century manuscript in Paris (Parisinus suppl. gr. 388, referred to by editors as A) calls this collection “Theognis Elegies Book One” (θεογνιδος ελεγειων α), and adds a further 158 lines that it initially entitled Theognis Elegies Book Two, but “of Theognis” (θεογνιδος) has been deleted, leaving only ελεγειων β. The widely copied “Book One” has near its beginning a poem (19–26) in which the singer claims to put a seal (sphrēgis) on his verses (epē) so that they will not be changed (as must often have happened to songs when they were reperformed in an oral culture6) and so that all will recognize them as the work of Theognis of Megara; he then goes on to contrast his poetic fame with his lack of success with his fellow citizens, and perhaps (if 27–30 are part of the same poem) to exhort Cyrnus to act justly:7

Κύρνε, σοφιζομένωι μὲν ἐμοὶ σφρηγὶς ἐπικείσθω

τοῖσδ’ ἔπεσιν, λήσει δ’ οὔποτε κλεπτόμενα, 20

οὐδέ τις ἀλλάξει κάκιον τοὐσθλοῦ παρεόντος ·

ὧδε δὲ πᾶς τις ἐρεῖ· “Θεύγνιδός ἐστιν ἔπη

τοῦ Μεγαρέως· πάντας δὲ κατ’ ἀνθρώπους ὀνομαστός.”

ἀστοῖσιν δ’ οὔπω πᾶσιν ἁδεῖν δύναμαι.

οὐδὲν θαυμαστόν, Πολυπαΐδη· οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ Ζεύς 25

οὔθ’ ὕων πάντεσσ’ ἁνδάνει οὔτ’ ἀνέχων.

σοὶ δ’ ἐγὼ εὖ φρονέων ὑποθήσομαι, οἷά περ αὐτός,

Κύρν’, ἀπὸ τῶν ἀγαθῶν παῖς ἔτ’ ἐὼν ἔμαθον·

πέπνυσο, μηδ’ αἰσχροῖσιν ἐπ’ ἔργμασι μηδ’ ἀδίκοισιν

τιμὰς μηδ’ ἀρετὰς ἕλκεο μηδ’ ἄφενος. 30

For me through my exercise of my skill let a seal, Cyrnus, be placed on these verses, and their theft will never go unnoticed, nor will anyone substitute something worse when something good is at hand: but everyone will say, “They are the verses of Theognis of Megara, and he is famous among all men”; yet I am not yet able to please all my fellow townsmen. Nothing surprising, Polypaides: for not even Zeus pleases everyone, whether he rains or doesn’t rain.

But with good intention I shall offer you the sort of precepts I myself learned from the good when I was still a boy: be sensible, and do not amass honours or excellence or wealth on the basis of shameful or unjust actions.

Theognidea 19–30

Disaffection with these fellow townsmen, who now include previously disenfranchised rustics, appears in several pieces in the collection, for example lines 53–56:

Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔθ’ ἥδε πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι

οἳ πρόσθ’ οὔτε δίκας ἤιδεσαν οὔτε νόμους,

ἀλλ’ ἀμφὶ πλευραῖσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον,

ἔξω δ’ ὥστ’ ἔλαφοι τῆσδ’ ἐνέμοντο πόλεος.

Cyrnus, this city is still a city, but the people are actually different, people who formerly knew neither legal procedures nor laws, but wore out goatskins about their flanks, and grazed outside this city like deer.

Theognidea 53–56

In one such outburst (39–52), the longest of the few complete poems in Book One confidently attributable to Theognis on the basis of its vocative Κύρνε, the singer expresses his fears that the unjust dealings of those running the city may lead to bloody civil war and then to a tyrant seizing power. Many other poems express the contempt for “bad people” (κακοί) felt by a member of a once-dominant elite for whom only they and their like are “good” (ἀγαθοί … ἐσθλοί, 57).

These views are frequently directed to an addressee who appears only in the vocative, Cyrnus (Κύρνε, 38 etc.; Κύρν’, 27 etc.), as in the two poems just quoted, and who is urged only to associate with, and to learn from, the “good” (ἀγαθοί). It is debated whether or not the syntax of the sphrēgis poem can be so construed as to have its poet state that the word Κύρνε is a seal, sphrēgis, whose presence will guarantee a poem to be his—a syntax that requires Κύρνε simultaneously to be a vocative and a term in apposition to σφρηγίς.8 But almost all scholars treat the vocative’s presence as a mark of Theognidean authorship. Given, however, that many pieces in the collection manifestly or arguably are not complete poems but only excerpts, often excerpts that lack their opening lines where an address might be expected, the absence of an address to Cyrnus (Κύρνε) cannot alone show a poem not to be by Theognis. Nor, of course, is its presence an absolute guarantee, since that vocative Κύρνε could have replaced another metrically identical term at some stage in the transmission, just as at 213 θυμέ (“O my heart”) is the reading of manuscript A whereas all other manuscripts have Κύρνε.9 On the basis of the poems addressed to Κύρνε, however, Theognis of Megara emerges as a poet for whom, as for Solon, the social and political troubles of his city often dominated his thoughts and elicited sympotic poetry, but who was also ready to offer symposiasts, through their place-holder Cyrnus, traditional elite gnōmai concerning breeding, friendship (true and false), trustworthiness, betrayal, riches, poverty, etc.—concerns many of which are familiar from the Aeolic songs of another disillusioned would-be-aristocrat some two generations earlier, Alcaeus of Mytilene. Several of the pieces in the collection are meta-sympotic, often focused on drinking, but none of these is secured for Theognis by the vocative Κύρνε.

One Κύρνε poem, however, does touch on sympotic activity, not simply moving outside the moral and political sphere but fusing an eloquent promise of poetic immortality to Κύρνε with a complaint that he deceives the poet, and presenting a vivid and invaluable self-reflexive picture of an elegiac song’s peregrination around young men’s symposia throughout the Greek world:

σοὶ μὲν ἐγὼ πτέρ’ ἔδωκα, σὺν οἷσ’ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα πόντον

πωτήσηι, κατὰ γῆν πᾶσαν ἀειρόμενος

ῥηϊδίως · θοίνηις δὲ καὶ εἰλαπίνηισι παρέσσηι

ἐν πάσαις πολλῶν κείμενος ἐν στόμασιν, 240

καί σε σὺν αὐλίσκοισι λιγυφθόγγοις νέοι ἄνδρες

εὐκόσμως ἐρατοὶ καλά τε καὶ λιγέα

ἄισονται. καὶ ὅταν δνοφερῆς ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίης

βῆις πολυκωκύτους εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους,

οὐδέποτ’ οὐδὲ θανὼν ἀπολεῖς κλέος, ἀλλὰ μελήσεις

ἄφθιτον ἀνθρώποισ’ αἰὲν ἔχων ὄνομα,

Κύρνε, καθ’ Ἑλλάδα γῆν στρωφώμενος, ἠδ’ ἀνὰ νήσους

ἰχθυόεντα περῶν πόντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον,

οὐχ ἵππων νώτοισιν ἐφήμενος · ἀλλά σε πέμψει

ἀγλαὰ Μουσάων δῶρα ἰοστεφάνων. 250

πᾶσι δ’, ὅσοισι μέμηλε, καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδή

ἔσσηι ὁμῶς, ὄφρ’ ἂν γῆ τε καὶ ἠέλιος.

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ὀλίγης παρὰ σεῦ οὐ τυγχάνω αἰδοῦς,

ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ μικρὸν παῖδα λόγοις μ’ ἀπατᾶις.

I have given you wings with which you will fly, soaring easily, over the boundless sea and all the land. You will be present at every dinner and feast, lying in the mouths of many, and lovely youths, accompanied by the clear sounds of pipes, will sing of you decorously with beautiful, clear voices. And when you go to Hades’ house of wailing, down in the dark earth’s depths, never, not even in death, will you lose your fame, but you will be in men’s thoughts, your name ever immortal, Cyrnus, as you roam throughout the land of Greece and among the islands, crossing over the fish-filled, unharvested sea, not riding on the backs of horses, but the splendid gifts of the violet-wreathed Muses will escort you. For all who care about their gifts, even for future generations, you will be alike the subject of song, as long as earth and sun exist. And yet I do not meet with a slight respect from you, but you deceive me with words, as if I were a small child.

Theognidea 237–254

Little more can be said about a historical person Theognis than can be inferred from those poems in the collection that seem to be his, and one line of scholarship sees the persona of the poems as no more than a poetic fiction adopted by conservative symposiasts.10 The Suda entry dates a historical Theognis to the 59^th Olympiad (544–541 BC) while ancient chronographers offer similar dates (between the 57^th and 59^th Olympiads, 552–541 BC).11 Some modern scholars, however, have argued for a much earlier date, around the 590s,12 or even before the 630s.13 Unfortunately our knowledge of the oscillation between oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny in Megara is insufficient to pin the Theognis of our poems to a particular period, nor can the fears that he expresses of a tyranny (39–52) be used to locate that poem before Megara’s late seventh-century tyrant Theagenes.14

What is perhaps more important than Theognis’ date is his poetry’s combination of a preoccupation with the impact of widening political participation in his own city with the expectation his poetic treatment of this and related themes will be of interest in symposia throughout the Greek world. In many cities, of which Athens is the best documented, the extension of power and offices to a wider group of the free population in the sixth and fifth centuries did little to erode the established landowning families’ view of themselves as entitled to privilege and wealth, and as fitted by their ancestry and upbringing to use these better than those they saw as parvenus. In any of these cities an elite symposiast could sing the poems beginning “Cyrnus, this city is pregnant” (39) and “Cyrnus, this city is still a city” (53, quoted above), and refer the term “this city” and the description of its decline to his own polis.15 The lack of Megarian detail that frustrates modern historians paid dividends in securing such poems widespread re-performance.

This bears upon the development of the collection in which Theognis’ poems are preserved. Many poems in Book One share this political stance without being securely attributable to Theognis—e.g., 847–850, sometimes quoted by modern scholars as if certainly Theognidean:

λὰξ ἐπίβα δήμωι κενεόφρονι, τύπτε δὲ κέντρωι

ὀξέι καὶ ζεύγλην δύσλοφον ἀμφιτίθει·

οὐ γὰρ ἔθ’ εὑρήσεις δῆμον φιλοδέσποτον ὧδε

ἀνθρώπων, ὁπόσους ἠέλιος καθορᾶι.

Trample the empty-headed people, beat them with a sharp goad, and place round their necks a yoke that will be hard on their mane. For among all the men on whom the sun looks down upon you will find no people so keen to have a master.

It seems that the collection that we have, or at least its core, goes back to a song-book or song-books intended for use in the symposia of the traditionally-minded elite and drawing on many poets other than Theognis. It included, as has been mentioned, five incomplete pieces of Solon.16 There are lines of Mimnermus17 and Tyrtaeus,18 and perhaps Archilochus,19 while an exhortation to drink wine from beneath Taygetus (879–884) is probably also Laconian. Crucially, however, there are two substantial poems, apparently complete,20 addressed to a Simonides, of which one (467–496) is a meta-sympotic poem, prescribing correct behavior to fellow symposiasts and discouraging excessive drinking, a poem that on the basis of a line cited by Aristotle can be attributed to Euenus of Paros. The second substantial poem addressed to Simonides (667–682), lamenting the current mis-governance of the poet’s city, should also be by Euenus. That long and seemingly complete poems by this late fifth-century sophist should appear in a collection of pieces chiefly by major seventh- and sixth-century poets, pieces that are often incomplete, suggests that Euenus himself may have been the compiler of an early form of our collection, perhaps for the benefit of the sons of Callias whom we know he taught toward 400 BC.21 In that case the addressee of Euenus’ own poems would be not the famous early-fifth-century poet from Ceos but a lesser Simonides from Eretria, also apparently writing poetry (but also prose) toward the end of the fifth century.22

The section of our Theognidea that may go back to a collection compiled by Euenus probably begins at 255 with a gnomic couplet called by Aristotle “The Delian epigram,” inscribed, he says, on the propylon of the Letöon on Delos:23

κάλλιστον τὸ δικαιότατον· λῶιστον δ’ ὑγιαίνειν·

πρᾶγμα δὲ τερπνότατον, τοῦ τις ἐρᾶι, τὸ τυχεῖν.

Fairest is what is most just; best is to be healthy; but the thing that gives greatest pleasure is to get what one desires.

Theognidea 255–256

The point at which our Theognidea may cease to reflect Euenus’ collection is around 1000, perhaps after the pieces by Tyrtaeus (1003–1006) and Mimnermus (1017–1022), a piece whose lamentation for the passing of youth and associated erotic desire falls within the wide range of topics political and meta-sympotic represented in these 750 or so lines.

The opening section, however, 19–254, has a very different flavor. Its high proportion of poems secured for Theognis and its very small number of demonstrably non-Theognidean pieces suggests that this sequence may go back to an collection that aimed to include (either only or chiefly) poetry of Theognis himself, that arranged these pieces in some sort of discernable order, and that put his sphrēgis-poem appropriately at its beginning and his poem promising Cyrnus poetic immortality at its end, though neither need have been initially composed with such a textual location in mind. Some have even thought that 19–254 was put together by Theognis himself,24 with the opening and closing poems crafted for these roles, a hypothesis that implies the creation of a book-text whose contents would be secured for Theognis of Megara by the opening sphrēgis, a text that would be our first documented collection of short poems.25 Even if not compiled by Theognis himself this collection that was chiefly of his poetry probably antedates that which I have ascribed to Euenus.

The section running from 255 to around 1000/1022, however, whose combination with 19–254 may be credited to Euenus or may have happened in a later generation, and which included two of Euenus’ own poems complete, seems to have aspired to be a wider selection of archaic and classical elegy, stretching from Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, and perhaps Archilochus in the seventh century, through Solon in the sixth, to a long piece (773–788) whose poet is uncertain (perhaps the Megarian Philiadas),26 but whose opening prayer to Apollo to protect Megara from the Medes anchors it to the year 480, and a shorter prayer to Zeus that also mentions the Persian wars but is linked to no specific city (756–764). This section has some other long and good poems whose authorship is uncertain: 373–400, expostulating to Zeus (“Dear Zeus, I am astonished at you”: Ζεῦ φίλε, θαυμάζω σε) for allowing bad men to prosper and good men to suffer; 731–752 a prayer to Zeus (“Father Zeus, might it happen that …”: Ζεῦ πάτερ, εἴθε γένοιτο …) punishment should fall on malefactors themselves, not on their children, whereas currently they go scot-free;27 and 903–930, a somewhat meandering meditation addressed to Democles (923) on whether to save one’s wealth or to spend it on a life of pleasure while one can; and a lighter-hearted poem of welcome to an addressee called Clearistus, who has arrived by sea and who is promised a level of hospitality that will be modest, commensurately with the singer’s means (511–522).

Between 255 and around 1000/1022 there are a very few couplets that are also found between 19 and 254. These are (a) 332a and b, lamenting that nobody is a trustworthy friend to an exile, and found only in the Paris manuscript A, which repeat 209–210; (b) 509–510, condemning excessive consumption of wine and asserting responsible drinking to be a mark of a good man (ἀγαθός), which repeat 211–212; and (c) 643–644, complaining that many are good companions (ἑταῖροι) only at a symposium (“beside the mixing bowl,” πὰρ κρητῆρι) but not when it comes to serious matters, which repeat (with some variation) 115–116. The number of couplets that duplicate ones already found in 19–254 or 255–1000/1022, however, greatly increases between 1038a and 1184b—some 56 lines in all. It seems that in some stage in the collection’s development around 200 lines were added to the existing total of around 1000, and that whoever added them was drawing either on the same, presumably larger, collection of early elegy as the compiler of 19 to 1000/1022, or on a quite similar collection. West argued that the same, larger collection, which he termed the florilegium magnum, was drawn on by both sections, and that this larger collection was Hellenistic. His arguments have not convinced, and most hold that two similar collections were drawn upon.28 If we accept that Euenus crafted 255–1000/1022, then the most likely hypothesis is that in the Hellenistic period a scribe or editor of some sort added to Euenus’ collection a further, small section of poems drawn from a different collection, but that he made this addition so mechanically that he failed to observe extensive duplication.

That some of 19–254 was already circulating in the fourth century together with at least some of the pieces in 255ff is shown by a quotation in Plato’s Meno 95d of 33–36 as having been slightly modified by Theognis in 434–438. But this cannot be used to show that 19–254 had already been combined with Euenus’ collection by the time Plato’s Meno was written—Plato could have been using another collection of Theognis’ poetry; and indeed in the early fourth century at least one other collection of Theognis’ poems was known, which had 183–190 at or near its opening.29

As in Euenus’ collection, at least in the form in which we have it, many of the poems in the sequence after ca. 1000/1022 are short, and several look as if they are incomplete. At least four are unlikely to be by Theognis: two (1059–1062 and 1085–106) because their addressees are Timagoras and Demonax respectively; another, the longest (1035–1050), because no vocative Κύρνε is found in its 16 lines complaining that all virtues have disappeared and only Hope remains; and 1123–1128, already mentioned as probably by Archilochus.30 On the other hand a somewhat higher proportion of pieces than in 255–1000/1022 is indicated as probably attributable to Theognis by the presence of Κύρνε, and no poem is meta-sympotic. Either the source of this last section, or the person who added it, had a more serious cast of mind than Euenus, focused more narrowly on social and political issues, and he was more interested in including Theognis’ dyspeptic and disillusioned poetry.

Before line 19 stand four short pieces, hymns addressed to Apollo (1–4 and 5–10), and to the Muses and Graces (15–18), and a prayer to Artemis (11–14). Such songs were characteristically sung at the opening of a symposium, and their presence helps to confirm that (at whatever stage they were added) the collection was envisaged as a sympotic song-book. Lines 11–12 specify an Artemis whose cult was established by Agamemnon, locating the prayer (at least in the poet’s imagination) at Amarynthus near Eretria, though the poet might be Megarian, given that Megara too had a cult of Artemis established by Agamemnon.31 Aristotle’s citation of line 13 as by Theognis shows that by his time this poem, and presumably the three associated hymns, were in a Theognidean collection, perhaps that running from 19 to 254.

It has sometimes been argued that only in late antiquity or Byzantium did our Book One assume the form that our medieval manuscripts present.32 As Theognis papyri come to light, however, that theory has become untenable. In 1956 Oxyrynchus papyrus 2380 showed crucially that in the second century Ad 255–78 were alreAdy continuous with 254. In 1993 a Berlin papyrus (published in 1970 by Maehler as unidentified hexameters) was identified as Theognidea 917–933, showing that in a second-century Ad text 931–932 and the piece beginning at 933 already followed immediately on the long poem constituted by lines 903–930.33 Most recently Oxyrynchus papyrus 5265, published in 2016, has shown that in the second or third century Ad lines 1117–1140 (six pieces in West’s edition) were in the order given by the manuscript tradition.

Despite the many uncertainties concerning the genesis of “Theognis Book One” and the proportion of its poetry that is by Theognis of Megara, its 1220 lines are a precious testimony to the very wide range of subjects, stances, and tones to be found in archaic and classical elegy. Much of it is good poetry, some of whose features are apparent in passages already quoted. One may add its range of imagery, from which I pick out just one set as especially thought-provoking—images drawn from the animal world.

Animals can be used to characterize the singer, an addressee or a third party. Several times the singer compares himself or another to a draught animal. Thus in 371–372 the singer presents himself as a beast which his addressee is goading, against its will, to put its head under a yoke, presumably to pull a wagon or a plough.34 But this yoke-imagery can be turned round and applied to testing the docility of a man or a woman (or a husband or wife?):

οὐδὲ γὰρ εἰδείης ἀνδρὸς νόον οὔτε γυναικός,

πρὶν πειρηθείης ὥσπερ ὑποζυγίου.

For you could not know the mind of a man or a woman

before you have tested it, like a draught animal

Theognidea 125–126

The relationship imagined by this couplet might or might not be erotic. But yoke-imagery is not confined to erotic situations. It is also deployed to figure a relation of subjection into which the singer of denies he will ever allow his personal enemies to force him:

οὔποτε τοῖς ἐχθροῖσιν ὑπὸ ζυγὸν αὐχένα θήσω

δύσλοφον, οὐδ᾿ εἴ μοι Τμῶλος ἔπεστι κάρηι.

Never will my enemies make me put my neck beneath a yoke that is painful to the

mane, not even if Mount Tmolus is on my head.

Theognidea 1023–1024

Similarly it is deployed to canvas the appropriate relation between elite males and the demos as we have seen in 847–850, discussed above.35

The master-beast relationship is paralleled by the predator-prey image. That parallel comes out clearly in the image’s most striking deployment, when a lover compares himself first to a lion, while insisting that he did not exploit his conquest of his fawn-like prey, and follows this with a comparison to a charioteer who has yoked horses but not mounted the chariot:

νεβρὸν ὑπὲξ ἐλάφοιο λέων ὣς ἀλκὶ πεποιθώς,

ποσσὶ καταμάρψας αἵματος οὐκ ἔπιον·

τειχέων δ᾿ ὑψηλῶν ἐπιβὰς πόλιν οὐκ ἀλάπαξα·

ζευξάμενος δ᾿ ἵππους ἅρματος οὐκ ἐπέβην·

πρήξας δ᾿ οὐκ ἔπρηξα, καὶ οὐκ ἐτέλεσσα τελέσσας,

δρήσας δ᾿ οὐκ ἔδρησ᾿, ἤνυσα δ᾿ οὐκ ἀνύσας.

Like a lion confident in its might I have snatched with my paws a fawn from beneath its parent deer but not drunk its blood; I have scaled high walls but not sacked the city; I have yoked horses but not mounted the chariot; I have achieved, but not achieved, I have brought to completion, but not brought to completion, I have done, but not done, I have accomplished, but not accomplished.

Theognidea 949–954

The repetition of 949–50 at 1278c–d confirms the erotic interpretation of these lines, if it needs any confirmation—note too the double entendre ἐπέβην, “I mounted,” at 952.36 The comparison of a pursuer to a lion contrasts with an enigmatic poem in which the singer concludes a 10-line prayer for revenge on those who have stolen his property (341–50) with the self-characterization.

ἐγὼ δὲ κύων ἐπέρησα χαράδρην

χειμάρρωι ποταμῶι πάντ᾿ ἀποσεισάμενος

τῶν εἴη μέλαν αἷμα πιεῖν.

But I am a dog who has crossed a river-bed, shaking off everything in the torrentialstream. Might it come about that I drink their black blood

Theognidea 347–349.

One further comparison reflects the pathological state of distrust that marks the relations of Theognidean sympotic singers to their socio-political associates (are they friends or foes?), the image of the octopus, much quoted in later Greek writing:

θυμέ, φίλους κατὰ πάντας ἐπίστρεφε ποικίλον ἦθος,

ὀργὴν συμμίσγων ἥντιν᾿ ἕκαστος ἔχει.

πουλύπου ὀργὴν ἴσχε πολυπλόκου, ὃς ποτὶ πέτρηι,

τῆι προσομιλήσηι, τοῖος ἰδεῖν ἐφάνη.

νῦν μὲν τῆιδ᾿ ἐφέπου, τότε δ᾿ ἀλλοῖος χρόα γίνου.

κρέσσων τοι σοφίη γίνεται ἀτροπίης.

My heart, in the company of all your friends turn your disposition about to take many forms, blending in the temperament that each man has. Take on the temperament of the octopus of many wiles, which to the sight appears just like the rock whose company it has chosen. Now follow along this path, at another time change your complexion. I tell you, cleverness is more powerful than inflexibility. Theognidea 213–218 37

Theognis “Book Two”

The final section of manuscript A, lines which are only preserved there, is even more difficult to assess. It is a collection of erotic verse, prefaced by an introductory address to a destructive Eros, and many poems begin “Boy” (ὦ παῖ or παῖ). Some have inferred from an entry in the Suda that at the time it or its source was compiled these poems were embedded in the main collection, and that a bowdlerizing Byzantine later extracted them to make the collection more acceptable: ὅτι μὲν παραινέσεις ἔγραψε Θέογνις < . . . . >: ἀλλ’ ἐν μέσωι τούτων παρεσπαρμέναι μιαρίαι καὶ παιδικοὶ ἔρωτες καὶ ἄλλα, ὅσα ὁ ἐνάρετος ἀποστρέφεται βίος (“That Theognis wrote exhortations : but in the middle of these there are scattered pieces of filth and pederastic desires, and other things that the virtuous life rejects”).38 Although such a procedure has a parallel in Cephalas’ treatment of homo-erotic poems in the Greek Anthology,39 the hypothesis does not adequately explain the phenomena in the case of the Theognidea. At least one poem addressed to Cyrnus that remains in Book One (237–254, cited above) is implicitly homo-erotic, and another substantial poem (993–1002), addressed to one Academus, envisages a singing competition in which the prize is “a boy in his beautiful prime” (παῖς καλὸν ἄνθος ἔχων), a poem that Athenaeus rightly judged to be pederastic.40 Book One is quoted or anthologized throughout antiquity, from Plato and Xenophon (see above) to the anthology of Orion in the fifth century Ad, with quotations spread (admittedly unevenly) from line 14 to 1179–1180.41 On the other hand the only lines of “Book Two” to which any ancient author refers are 1253–1254. 1253 is ascribed to “wise men” (σοφοί) by c. 48 of the Loves (Amores/ Ἔρωτες), transmitted as by Lucian but usually thought apocryphal, and 1253–4 are quoted without attribution by Plato in the Lysis (212e): this couplet is attributed to Solon in the fifth century Ad by Hermias of Alexandria commenting on Plato’s Phaedrus,42 an attribution that is probably correct. Along with 1341–1350, a cri de coeur addressed to a Simonides, so probably by Euenus,43 the Solonian lines 1253–1254 show that Book 2 is also an anthology, and indeed it is an anthology in which one piece, 1353–1356, is shown by its vocative Κύρνε to be by Theognis. The total invisibility of this homo-erotic anthology until early in the tenth century it was copied into manuscript A to follow after Book One—before the censorious remark in the Suda—shows that it had a different transmission in antiquity. But its claim to transmit early elegy may be reinforced, alongside the pieces by Solon, Theognis, and Euenus, by the appearance of a phrase from one of its hexameters on an Attic vase from Tanagra painted around 500 BC, ὦ παίδων κάλλιστε (“O most beautiful of boys”).44 We may well be dealing with a collection of homo-erotic songs put together late in the fifth century, an invaluable testimony to a central feature of archaic and classical symposia.45

FURTHER READING

In addition to the discussions referred to in footnotes an important contribution to understanding Solon’s political and poetic activity in its historical context is made by Irwin 2005, and to understanding its reception in the classical period by the chapters in Nagy and Noussia-Fantuzzi 2015. For good modern commentaries see Noussia-Fantuzzi 2010, and on a generous selection of fragments Mülke 2002.

The sympotic background to the poetry of both Solon and Theognis can be further explored in Wȩcowski 2014, and Murray 2018. Book-length investigations of the nature and probable genesis of the Theognidea are to be found in Colesanti 2008, and Selle 2008. Recent interesting suggestions for understanding the “seal” at 19–30 and the nature of “Book 2” include Bakker 2017, and Selle 2013.

Notes

1 For the text on the dipylon oinochoē see Hansen, CEG 432, SEG 43.10, Cardin 2017, who prints hὸς νῦν ὀρχεστο̃ν πάντον ἀταλότατα παίζει ΤΟΤΟΔ̣ΕK . . M . N vacat.

2 So Lardinois 2006.

3 Cf. Martin 2006, supporting performance of both elegy and iambus in some sort of political meeting on the basis of comparative evidence from other cultures; Bowie 2018, arguing for a more formal and political context for performance of trochaic tetrameters than of iambic trimeters.

4 Pace Faraone 2008.

5 See Bowie 1986: 18–19.

6 For the imperative to prevent change Bakker 2017: 111–112 aptly compares the obligations of an envoy to Delphi (θεωρός) set out at 805–810.

7 For full discussions see Selle 2008: 289–311, Colesanti 2011: 241–262, Bakker 2017: 105–112, for whom “Κύρν(ε)” is a seal that “designates both the song’s speaker and its listener” (105), and the seal “signifies the right words uttered by the right speaker to the right addressee” (108).

8 West 1974: 149–150 denies that Κύρνε is claimed to be the “seal” but in fact uses the vocative’s presence as a criterion for Theognidean authorship. For a similar linguistic game to that involved in the double syntax of Κύρνε cf. the juxtaposition of ὄνομα and Κύρνε at 245–246, quoted immediately below. Cf. in favor of a double syntax for Κύρνε Bakker 2017: 109–110, rightly identifying ἐπικείσθω as “performative” in J. L. Austin’s sense.

9 In the repetition of this couplet at 1071–1072 both A and other manuscripts have Κύρνε. Cf. θυμέ at 1029 whereas the related but not identical line 355 has Κύρνε.

10 See Nagy in Figueira and Nagy 1985.

11 See West 1974: 65.

12 Lane Fox 2000.

13 West 1974: 65–71.

14 As West 1974: 68.

15 See Bakker 2017: 103–105 on what he calls “prospective indexicality.” Cf. Bowie 1986: 14–17.

16 153–4 = Solon fr. 6.3–4; 227–232 = Solon fr. 13.71–76; 315–318 = Solon fr. 15; 585–590 = Solon fr. 13.65–70; 719–728 = Solon fr. 24.

17 795–6 = Mimnermus fr. 7; 1017–1022 = Mimnermus fr. 5.1–6 (1–3 are preserved only by the Theognidea: Stobaeus 4.50.69 has only 5–8).

18 1003–6 = Tyrtaeus fr. 12.13–16: indeed these four lines are our basis for combining two pieces quoted separately by Stobaeus (4.10.1 and 6) to form fr. 12.

19 1123–8, see Bowie 2008.

20 Condello 2009, however, argues that 467–496 consists of two or even three different poems.

21 Plato, Apology 20a–b, cf. Bowie 2012: 130.

22 Suda Σ 444: Σιμωνίδης, Καρύστιος ἢ Ἐρετριεύς, ἐποποιός. Τὴν εἰς Αὐλίδα σύνοδον τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, Τριμέτρων βιβλία β, Περὶ Ἰφιγενείας α (“Simonides, from Carystus or Eretria, a hexameter poet. The gathering of the Achaeans at Aulis; Trimeters in two books; On Iphigeneia, one book”). See Bowie 2010c and 2012. An alternative hypothesis, setting the collection’s genesis in the circle of Critias in the same period, is suggested by Murray 2018: 151.

23 Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1099a27 (“Delian epigram”), Eudem. Eth. 1214a5 (Letöon).

24 Reitzenstein 1893: 75–81 and 264–269. His arguments have been restated with assent by Rösler 2006.

25 For the idea that the sphrēgis refers precisely to the use of a writing to create a fixed text see Pratt 1995, Hubbard 2007.

26 For an epigrammatist Philiadas from Megara around 480 BC cf. Steph. Byz. s.v. Θέσπεια, Page 1981: 289–290.

27 For another prayer in a sympotic context beginning ὦ Ζε[ῦ] π[άτε]ρ ἐ[κ] χρημοσύν see the Brygos cup discussed by Gaunt 2014.

28 E.g., Selle 2008: 324.

29 “From a work by Xenophon on Theognis” (Ξενοφῶντος ἐκ τοῦ περὶ Θεόγνιδος), Stobaeus 4.29.53, cf. West 1974: 56. It has been suggested to me by Susan Prince that Stobaeus’ ascription to Xenophon is erroneous and that the quotation is more probably from a work of Antisthenes.

30 Above with n. 19.

31 Pausanias 1.31.5, 43.1; cf. van Groningen 1966: 14–15.

32 Carrière 1948, West 1974.

33 Kotansky 1993.

34 Cf. the quatrain in Book 2 presenting subjection to a yoke as the inevitable state of lovers of a παῖς, 1357–1360.

35 Above p. 309.

36 Van Groningen 1966 Ad loc. saw the lines’ presence in Book One as counting against an erotic sense.

37 213–214 reappear at 1071–1072, 217–218 at 1073–1074.

38 Suda s.v. Θέογνις Θ 136 Adler. The hypothesis originated with Welcker 1826.

39 West 1974: 45.

40 Athenaeus 310a–b.

41 Orion 5.12 quoting 141–142, 3.5 quoting 1179–1180. For a full list of testimonia, including all quotations, see Selle 2008: 398–423.

42 231e, Hermias p. 38 Couvreur. The lines are Solon fr. 23.

43 Vetta 1980 Ad loc. argues that 1341–5 and 1346–50 are two different poems: if he is correct, only 1346–50 is secured for Euenus by its address to Simonides.

44 CVA Athens 1357. But as has been observed, the phrase is very short, and could be seen as from a sympotic koinē.

45 For an excellent introduction and commentary to “Book Two” see Vetta 1980.