Theognis (1), elegiac poet from Megara
Theognis (1), elegiac poet from Megara
- Andrew Ford
Summary
The Theognidea is a collection of archaic Greek elegy amounting to nearly 1400 verses; its content is mainly gnomological advice on issues of politics and ethics, with the symposium as the ostensible occasion for its presentation. A passage near the opening of the work announces that these are the verses of Theognis of Megara, who is widely famed for his songs; and yet some of the verses are attested as having been composed by other Greek elegiac poets and the corpus as a whole has clearly suffered from repeated editing and excerpting. If neither the poetry nor the historical traditions about Theognis yield much reliable information about him, the Theognidea remains a valuable anthology of social and political thought among late archaic and early classical Greek elites.
Subjects
- Greek Literature
Updated in this version
Article rewritten to reflect current scholarship.