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THEOGNIS OF MEGARA 83 Theognis of Megara, by far the best preserved of the elegists, owes his immortahty to his maxims, the brief statements of practical philosophy which the Greeks called ' Gnomai ' and the Romans ' Sentetitics! Some are merely moral — " Fairest is righteousness^ and best is healthy And sweetest is to win the hearfs desired Some are bitter — " Few men can cheat their haters, Kyrnos mine; Only true love is easy to betray / " Many show the exile waiting for his revenge — " Drink while they drink, and, though thine heart be galled^ Let no man living count the wounds of it : There comes a day for patience, and a day For deeds and joy, to all men and to thee .' " Theognis's doctrine is not food for babes. He is a Dorian noble, and a partisan of the bitterest type in a state renowned for its factions. He drinks freely ; he speaks of the Demos as ^ the vile' or as ^ my enemies'; once he prays Zeus to ^^ give him their black blood to drink!' That was when the Demos had killed all his friends, and driven him to beggary and exile, and the proud man had to write poems for those who enter- tained him. We hear, for instance, of an elegy on some Syracusans slain in battle. Our extant remains are entirely personal ebullitions of feeling or monitory addresses, chiefly to his squire Kyrnos. His relations with Kyrnos are typical of the Dorian soldier. He takes to battle with him a boy, his equal in station, to whom he is ^ like a father' (1. 1049). He teaches him all the duties of Dorian chivalry — to fight, to suffer in silence,