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79-488: Silenus presides over other daimons and is related to musical creativity, prophetic ecstasy, drunken joy, drunken dances and gestures. In the decorative arts , a "silene" is a Silenus-like figure, often a "mask" (face) alone. The original Silenus resembled a folkloric man of the forest, with the ears of a horse and sometimes also the tail and legs of a horse. The later sileni were drunken followers of Dionysus, usually bald and fat with thick lips and squat noses, and having

158-490: A daimōn ; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul , his newfound self-consciousness . Paul Shorey sees the daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests." Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399 BC, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in

237-402: A better and more refined nature. This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and passes for a trite expression. What is that, he asked? He answered: It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this

316-562: A birth date on or just before 600 BC, while others place his birth around 550 BC to fit in with the Persian invasion under either Darius or Xerxes. There is confusion also about his place of birth, "Megara", which Plato for example understood to be Megara Hyblaea in Sicily, while a scholiast on Plato cites Didymus for the rival theory that the poet was born in a Megara in Attica , and ventures

395-425: A complex character and an exponent of traditional Greek morality. Thus for example Isocrates includes him among "the best advisers for human life", although all consider words of advice both in poetry and in prose to be most useful, they certainly do not derive the greatest pleasure from listening to them, but their attitude towards them is the same as their attitude towards those who admonish: for although they praise

474-422: A continuous series of elegiac couplets featuring frequent, sudden changes in subject and theme, in which different people are addressed and even the speaker seems to change persona, voicing contradictory statements and, on a couple of occasions, even changing sex. It looks like a miscellaneous collection by different authors (some verses are in fact attributed elsewhere to other poets) but it is not known when or how

553-530: A copy of his work at the Artemisium . Friedrich Nietzsche , the German philosopher, already studied the work of Theognis during his school days at Schulpforta , the subject of his thesis entitled De Theognide Megarensi, an activity which he continued during his studies at Leipzig University. His first published article (in an influential classical journal, Rheinisches Museum ) concerned the historical transmission of

632-448: A core sequence of verses that can be reliably attributed to Theognis since they contain mention of Cyrnus and are attested by 4th century authorities such as Plato and Aristotle, though the rest of the corpus could still contain some authentic verses. West however acknowledges that the whole collection is valuable since it represents a cross-section of elegiac poetry composed in the sixth and early fifth centuries. According to another view,

711-539: A dichotomy based on a class distinction between aristocrats and "others", typical of the period but usually implicit in the works of earlier poets such as Homer—"In Theognis it amounts to an obsession". The verses are addressed to Cyrnus and other individuals of unknown identity, such as Scythes, Simonides, Clearistus, Onomacritus, Democles, Academus, Timagoras, Demonax and Argyris and "Boy". Poems are also addressed to his own heart or spirit, and deities such as Zeus , Apollo , Artemis , Castor and Pollux , Eros , Ploutos ,

790-487: A man of standing in his city, whose public actions however arouse some discontent; a man who sings to his drinking-comrades of his anxieties about the political situation; a man of cliques who finds himself betrayed by those he trusted, dispossessed of his lands in a democratic revolution, an impoverished and embittered exile dreaming of revenge. One forms a clear impression of his personality, sometimes high-spirited but more often despondent, and cynical even in his love poetry;

869-520: A man of strong feelings and candid in their expression. It was probably his reputation as a moralist, significant enough to deserve comment by Aristotle and Plato, that guaranteed the survival of his work through the Byzantine period. However, it is clear that we do not possess his total output. The Byzantine Suda , for example, mentions 2800 lines of elegiacs, twice the number preserved in medieval manuscripts. Different scholars have different theories about

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948-402: A moralist yet the entire corpus is valued today for its "warts and all" portrayal of aristocratic life in archaic Greece. The verses preserved under Theognis' name are written from the viewpoint of an aristocrat confronted by social and political revolution typical of Greek cities in the archaic period. Part of his work is addressed to Cyrnus, who is presented as his erōmenos . The author of

1027-495: A parody of Homer 's Odyssey IX. Silenus refers to the satyrs as his children during the play. Silenus may have become a Latin term of abuse around 211 BC, when it is used in Plautus ' Rudens to describe Labrax, a treacherous pimp or leno , as "...a pot-bellied old Silenus, bald head, beefy, bushy eyebrows, scowling, twister, god-forsaken criminal". In his satire The Caesars , the emperor Julian has Silenus sitting next to

1106-578: A part. His costuming includes a body stocking tufted with hair ( mallōtos chitōn ) that seems to have come into use in the mid-5th century BC. A theme in Greek philosophy and literature is the wisdom of Silenus, which posits an antinatalist philosophy: You, most blessed and happiest among humans, may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you, and thus you may consider it unlawful, indeed blasphemous, to speak anything ill or false of them, since they now have been transformed into

1185-477: A philosophy which mocks "slow Silenus" for being sober. In Brian Hooker 's 1923 English translation of Edmond Rostand 's Cyrano de Bergerac , Cyrano disparagingly refers to the ham actor Montfleury as "That Silenus who cannot hold his belly in his arms." Professor Silenus is a character in Evelyn Waugh 's first novel, Decline and Fall . He features as the disaffected architect of King's Thursday and provides

1264-739: A physical appearance like that of Silenus, with broad flat faces and fat bellies. In the Renaissance , a court dwarf posed for the Silenus-like figure astride a tortoise at the entrance to the Boboli Gardens , Florence. Rubens painted The Drunken Silenus (1616–17), now conserved in the Alte Pinakothek , Munich – the subject was also treated by van Dyck and Ribera . During the late 19th century in Germany and Vienna, symbolism from ancient Greece

1343-588: A playful but nonethless important way. Here we should note the repeated use of the word βάσανος ('touchstone', 'test': Theog. 415–18, 447–52, 1105–6, 1164; Pl. Laws 649d10, 650a2, 650b4) to describe the symposium. Moreover at the symposium poetry plays a significant part in teaching the participants the characteristics required of them to be good men.—N.T. Croally Sympotic topics covered by Theognis include wine, politics, friendship, war, life's brevity, human nature, wealth and love. Distinctions are frequently made between "good" ( ἐσθλοί ) and "bad" ( κακοί ),

1422-636: A point completely at rest, if one could only find it.... Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again.... But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all.... People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone... Silenus is one of the two main characters in Tony Harrison 's 1990 satyr play The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus , partly based on Sophocles ' play Ichneutae (5th century BC). Carl Linnaeus used

1501-501: A reward for his kindness toward Silenus, and Midas chose the power of turning everything he touched into gold . Another story was that Silenus had been captured by two shepherds, and regaled them with wondrous tales. In Euripides 's satyr play Cyclops , Silenus is stranded with the satyrs in Sicily , where they have been enslaved by the Cyclopes . They are the comic elements of the story,

1580-406: A scale from good to bad. ... [Plutarch] speaks of ‘great and strong beings in the atmosphere, malevolent and morose, who rejoice in [unlucky days, religious festivals involving violence against the self, etc.], and after gaining them as their lot, they turn to nothing worse.’ ... The use of such malign daemones by human beings seems not to be even remotely imagined here: Xenocrates' intention

1659-407: A song, while the earth and sun remain, Yet I am treated by you without even the least mark of respect And, as if I were a child, you have deceived me with words. In spite of such self-disclosures, almost nothing is known about Theognis the man: little is recorded by ancient sources and modern scholars question the authorship of most of the poems preserved under his name. Ancient commentators,

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1738-459: A spurious addition, including the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (see Nietzsche and Theognis below). However, many modern scholars consider the verses of Book 2 an integral part of the collection. The rest of the work also raises issues about authenticity, since some couplets look like lines attributed by ancient sources to other poets ( Solon , Euenus , Mimnermus and Tyrtaeus). and other couplets are repeated with few or no changes elsewhere in

1817-469: Is associated with lamentation. In ancient Greece it was a much more flexible medium, suitable for performance at drinking parties and public festivals, urging courage in war and surrender in love. It gave the hexameter line of epic verse a lyrical impulse by the addition of a shorter "pentameter" line, in a series of couplets accompanied by the music of the aulos or pipe. Theognis was conservative and unadventurous in his use of language, frequently imitating

1896-430: Is but for a day, why do you compel me to tell you those things of which it is better you should remain ignorant? For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature's excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.' It

1975-442: Is confirmed even by divine testimony. Pertinently to this they say that Midas, after hunting, asked his captive Silenus somewhat urgently, what was the most desirable thing among humankind. At first he could offer no response, and was obstinately silent. At length, when Midas would not stop plaguing him, he erupted with these words, though very unwillingly: 'you, seed of an evil genius and precarious offspring of hard fortune, whose life

2054-415: Is much disputed by scholars (see Modern scholarship below). All the poetry attributed to Theognis deals with subjects typically discussed at aristocratic symposia —drinking parties that had symbolic and practical significance for the participants: Authors as distant from each other as Theognis and Plato agree in seeing the symposium as a model for the city, a gathering where men may examine themselves in

2133-464: Is never to have been born at all Nor ever to have set eyes on the bright light of the sun But, since he is born, a man should make utmost haste through the gates of Death And then repose, the earth piled into a mound round himself. The lines were much quoted in antiquity, as for example by Stobaeus and Sextus Empiricus , and it was imitated by later poets, such as Sophocles and Bacchylides . Theognis himself might be imitating others: each of

2212-460: Is not clear whether Suda in this case means a date of birth or some other significant event in the poet's life. Some scholars have argued that the sources could have derived their dates from lines 773–82 under the assumption that these refer to Harpagus's attack on Ionia in the reign of Cyrus The Great . Chronological evidence from the poems themselves is hampered by their uncertain authenticity. Lines 29–52, if composed by Theognis, seem to portray

2291-468: Is plain therefore, that he declared the condition of the dead to be better than that of the living. This passage is redolent of Theognis ' Elegies (425–428). Silenus' wisdom appears in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer , who endorsed this famous dictum. Via Schopenhauer, Nietzsche discusses the "wisdom of Silenus" in The Birth of Tragedy . Both Socrates and Aesop were sometimes described as having

2370-504: Is said to be "in the land of the Hebrews ". Papposilenus is a representation of Silenus that emphasizes his old age, particularly as a stock character in satyr play or comedy . In vase painting , his hair is often white, and as in statuettes, Papposilenus has a pot belly , flabby breasts and shaggy thighs. In these depictions, it is often clear that the Papposilenus is an actor playing

2449-422: Is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed. In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. That even this is a self-projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher,

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2528-531: Is towards these daemones that we direct purifications and apotropaic rites , all kinds of divination, the art of reading chance utterances, and so on.’ ... This account differs from that of the early Academy in reaching back to the other, Archaic, view of daemones as souls, and thus anticipates the views of Plutarch and Apuleius in the Principate ... It clearly implies that daemones can cause illness to livestock: this traditional dominated view has now reached

2607-551: The Academy , of the daemon as a potentially dangerous lesser spirit: Burkert states that in the Symposium , Plato has "laid the foundation" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the daimon in any other way with Eros , who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and his metaphysical doctrine of an incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia  ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos

2686-503: The Muses and Graces . Theognis also details the heightened political tensions within Megara during the seventh century. His works depict the arrival of "other men" that have challenged and displaced former members of the elite. His works, particularly lines 53-58, demonstrate that increasing urbanization among the rural populace surrounding Megara has resulted in heightened social pressures within

2765-676: The Arabic jinni (or genie ), and in their humble efforts to help mediate the good and ill fortunes of human life, they resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon , respectively. Eudaimonia ( εὐδαιμονία ) came to mean "well-being" or "happiness". The comparable Roman concept is the genius who accompanies and protects a person or presides over a place (see genius loci ). A distorted view of Homer 's daemon results from an anachronistic reading in light of later characterizations by Plato and Xenocrates , his successor as head of

2844-610: The Genealogy of Morality , he describes the poet as a 'mouthpiece' of the Greek nobility: Theognis represents superior virtues as traits of the aristocracy and thus distinguishes (in Nietzsche's own words) the "truthful" aristocrat from the "lying common man". Charles Darwin represented a widespread preference for a biological interpretation of such statements when he commented on the above lines thus: The Grecian poet, Theognis ... saw how important selection, if carefully applied, would be for

2923-528: The camps. Separatists have agreed with Theodor Bergk (1843) that the collection was originally assembled as the work of Theognis, into which a large admixture of foreign matter has somehow found its way, or they have believed it was compiled originally as a textbook for use in schools or else as a set of aristocratic drinking songs, in which some verses of Theognis happen to be strongly represented. Quite recently Martin Litchfield West identified 306 lines as

3002-522: The city. His writings are thought by modern scholars to largely represent the aristocratic viewpoint of the Megarian elite. However, it is difficult for modern scholars to ascertain both Theognis' position in Megarian society and his role in writing these lines due to possible later additions to his works and the confusion surrounding his origins. Theognis wrote in the archaic elegiac style. An "elegy" in English

3081-553: The collected verses. Nietzsche was an ardent exponent of "catchword theory", which explains the arrangement of the Theognidean verses as pairs of poems, each pair linked by a shared word or catchword that could be placed anywhere in either poem, as for example in these pairs: However a later scholar has observed that the catchword principle can be made to work for just about any anthology as a matter of coincidence due to thematic association. Nietzsche valued Theognis as an archetype of

3160-575: The collection was finalized. Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , sometime known as "the father of Theognidean criticism", was the first modern scholar to edit the collection with a view to separating authentic verses from spurious additions (1826), Ernest Harrison ( Studies in Theognis 1902) subsequently defended the authenticity of the collection, and thus the scholarly world divided into two camps, which one recent scholar half-jokingly referred to as "separatists" and "unitarians" There have also been divisions within

3239-415: The deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium ). According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon…" A daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Walter Burkert , but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity. In Hesiod 's Theogony , Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon or a divine spirit, but, for example,

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3318-507: The deities, these figures were not always depicted without considerable moral ambiguity: On this account, the other traditional notion of the daemon as related to the souls of the dead is elided in favour of a spatial scenario which evidently also graduated in moral terms; though [Plato] says nothing of that here, it is a necessary inference from her account, just as Eros is midway between deficiency and plenitude. ... Indeed, Xenocrates ... explicitly understood daemones as ranged along

3397-555: The earliest poets whose work has been preserved in a continuous manuscript tradition (the work of other archaic poets is preserved as scattered fragments). In fact more than half of the extant elegiac poetry of Greece before the Alexandrian period is included in the approximately 1,400 lines of verse attributed to him, though several poems traditionally attributed to him were composed by others, e.g. Solon and Euenus . Some of these verses inspired ancient commentators to value him as

3476-406: The early 10th century, includes an end section titled "Book 2" (sometimes referred to as Musa Paedica ), which features some hundred additional couplets and which "harps on the same theme throughout—boy love." The quality of the verse in the end section is radically diverse, ranging from "exquisite and simple beauty" to "the worst specimens of the bungler's art", and many scholars have rejected it as

3555-407: The embattled aristocrat, describing him as "...a finely formed nobleman who has fallen on bad times", and "a distorted Janus -head" at the crossroads of social change. Not all the verses in the collection however fitted Nietzsche's notion of Theognis, the man, and he rejected Musa Paedica or "Book 2" as the interpolation of a malicious editor out to discredit him. In one of his seminal works, On

3634-460: The epic phrasing of Homer , even using his Ionian dialect rather than the Dorian spoken in Megara, and possibly borrowing inspiration and entire lines from other elegiac poets, such as Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus and Solon. His verses are not always melodious or carefully constructed but he often places key words for good effect and he employs linguistic devices such as asyndeton , familiar in common speech. He

3713-520: The exception of the agathodaemon , honored first with a libation in ceremonial wine-drinking, especially at the sanctuary of Dionysus , and represented in iconography by the chthonic serpent . Burkert suggests that, for Plato, theology rests on two Forms : the Good and the Simple; which "Xenocrates unequivocally called the unity god" in sharp contrast to the poet's gods of epic and tragedy. Although much like

3792-498: The feminine form Silene as the name of a genus of flowering plant. Daimon The Ancient Greek : δαίμων , spelled daimon or daemon (meaning "god", "godlike", "power", "fate"), originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit, such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and later the daimons of Hellenistic religion and philosophy . The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from

3871-402: The gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates , Socrates claimed to have a daimōnion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as

3950-756: The gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual, a daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon ' ". The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaímōn ( ἀγαθοδαίμων , "noble spirit"), from agathós ( ἀγαθός , "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and kakodaímōn ( κακοδαίμων , " malevolent spirit "), from kakós ( κακός , "bad, evil"). They resemble

4029-538: The gods to offer up his comments on the various rulers under examination, including Alexander the Great , Julius Caesar , Augustus , Marcus Aurelius (whom he reveres as a fellow philosopher-king ), and Constantine I . Silenus commonly figures in Roman bas-reliefs of the train of Dionysus, a subject for sarcophagi , embodying the transcendent promises of Dionysian cult. In Book VI of Pausanias' Description of Greece, his grave

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4108-658: The ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres , not daimones . From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus , to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; "good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts". The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects. One tradition of Greek thought, which found agreement in

4187-530: The intellectuals. In the Archaic or early Classical period, the daimon had been democratized and internalized for each person, whom it served to guide, motivate, and inspire, as one possessed of such good spirits. Similarly, the first-century Roman imperial cult began by venerating the genius or numen of Augustus , a distinction that blurred in time. Theognis Theognis of Megara ( Ancient Greek : Θέογνις ὁ Μεγαρεύς , Théognis ho Megareús )

4266-564: The last line of the Greek is imitated here in the English by mound round . According to Diogenes Laërtius , the second volume of the collected works of Antisthenes includes a book entitled Concerning Theognis . The work does not survive. The field of Theognidean studies is battle-scarred, strewn with theories dead or dying, the scene of bitter passions and blind partisanship...combat has been continuous, except for interruptions due to real wars. —David A. Campbell The collection of verses attributed to Theognis has no overall structure, being

4345-589: The latter, they prefer to associate with those who share in their follies and not with those who seek to dissuade them. As proof one could cite the poetry of Hesiod , Theognis and Phocylides ; for people say that they have been the best advisers for human life, but while saying this they prefer to occupy themselves with one another's follies than with the precepts of those poets."—Isocrates, To Nicocles 42–4, cited and translated by Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry , Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 171–3, yet Plato's Socrates cites some Theognidean verses to dismiss

4424-400: The legs of a human. Later still, the plural "sileni" went out of use and the only references were to one individual named Silenus, the teacher and faithful companion of the wine-god Dionysus. A notorious consumer of wine, he was usually drunk and had to be supported by satyrs or carried by a donkey . Silenus was described as the oldest, wisest and most drunken of the followers of Dionysus, and

4503-463: The longer hexameter lines is loosely paraphrased in the shorter pentameter lines, as if he borrowed the longer lines from some unknown source(s) and added the shorter lines to create an elegiac version. Moreover, the last line could be imitating an image from Homer's Odyssey (5.482), where Odysseus covers himself with leaves though some scholars think the key word ἐπαμησάμενον might be corrupted. The smothering accumulation of eta ( η ) sounds in

4582-470: The mind of Plato , was of a daimon which existed within a person from their birth, and that each individual was obtained by a singular daimon prior to their birth by way of lot . Homer 's use of the words theoí ( θεοί , "gods") and daímones ( δαίμονες ) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in Cratylus speculates that

4661-427: The most controversial in Theognidean scholarship and there is a large body of literature dedicated to their explanation. The 'seal' has been theorized to be the name of Theognis or of Cyrnus or, more generally, the distinct poetic style or else the political or ethical content of the 'poems', or even a literal seal on a copy entrusted to some temple, just as Heraclitus of Ephesus was said once to have sealed and stored

4740-411: The novel with one of its primary motifs. In the prophetic style of the traditional Greek Silenus he informs the protagonist that life is a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It's great fun... Of course at the very centre there's

4819-520: The old man by lacing with wine a fountain from which Silenus often drank. As Silenus fell asleep, the king's servants seized and took him to their master. An alternative story was that when lost and wandering in Phrygia , Silenus was rescued by peasants and taken to Midas, who treated him kindly. In return for Midas' hospitality Silenus told him some tales and the king, enchanted by Silenus' fictions, entertained him for five days and nights. Dionysus offered Midas

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4898-714: The opinion that Theognis might have later migrated to the Sicilian Megara (a similar theory had assigned an Attic birthplace to the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus ). Modern scholars in general opt for a birthplace in mainland Greek Megara though a suitable context for the poems could be found just about anywhere in archaic Greece and there are options for mix-and-match, such as a birth in mainland Megara and then migration to Sicilian Megara (lines 1197–1201 mention dispossession/exile and lines 783–88 journeys to Sicily, Euboea and Sparta). The elegiac verses attributed to Theognis present him as

4977-451: The poems celebrated him in his verse and educated him in the aristocratic values of the time, yet Cyrnus came to symbolize much about his imperfect world that the poet bitterly resented: πᾶσι δ᾽ ὅσοισι μέμηλε καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδὴ :ἔσσῃ ὁμῶς, ὄφρ᾽ ἂν γῆ τε καὶ ἠέλιος, αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ὀλίγης παρὰ σεῦ οὐ τυγχάνω αἰδοῦς, :ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ μικρὸν παῖδα λόγοις μ᾽ ἀπατᾷς. To all to whom there is pleasure in song and to people yet unborn You also will be

5056-399: The poems themselves and even modern scholars offer mixed signals about the poet's life. Some of the poems respond in a personal and immediate way to events widely dispersed in time. Ancient sources record dates in the mid-sixth century— Eusebius dates Theognis in the 58th Olympiad (548–45 BC), Suda the 59th Olympiad (544–41 BC) and Chronicon Paschale the 57th Olympiad (552–49 BC)—yet it

5135-552: The poet as a confused and self-contradictory sophist whose teachings are not to be trusted, while a modern scholar excuses self-contradictions as typical of a lifelong poet writing over many years and at the whim of inspiration. The Theognidea might in fact be a collection of elegiac poems by different authors (see Modern scholarship below) and the "life" that emerges from them depends on which poems editors consider authentic. Two modern authorities have drawn these portraits of Theognis, based on their own selections of his work: ...

5214-556: The political situation in Megara before the rise of the tyrant Theagenes , about the latter half of the seventh century , but lines 891–95 describe a war in Euboea in the second quarter of the sixth century , and lines 773–82 seem to refer to the Persian invasion of mainland Greece in the reign of Xerxes , at the end of the first quarter of the fifth century . Even some modern scholars have interpreted those lines in that time-frame, deducing

5293-433: The quest for authentically Theognidean elegies is rather beside the point—the collection owes its survival to the political motivations of Athenian intellectuals in the 5th and 4th century, disappointed with democracy and sympathetic to old aristocratic values: "The persona of the poet is traditionally based, ideologically conditioned and generically expressed." According to this view, the verses were drinking songs in so far as

5372-456: The root *da- "to divide". Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age , tutelary deities , or the forces of fate. See also daimonic : a religious, philosophical, literary and psychological concept. Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts , chthonic heroes, spirit guides , forces of nature, or

5451-442: The symposium was understood to be a microcosm of society, where multiple views were an aspect of adaptive behaviour by the embattled aristocracy, and where even eroticism had political symbolism: "As the polis envisaged by Theognis is degenerate, erotic relationships are filled with pain..." In lines 19–22, the poet announces his intention of placing a "seal" on the verses to protect them from theft and corruption. The lines are among

5530-493: The text. Ironically, Theognis mentions to his friend Cyrnus precautions that he has taken to ensure the fidelity of his legacy: "Cyrnus, as I compose my poems for you, let a seal be placed on the verses; if stolen they will never pass undetected nor will anyone exchange their present good content for worse, but everyone will say: They are the verses of Theognis of Megara, a name known to all mankind. "—lines 19–23 The nature of this seal and its effectiveness in preserving his work

5609-514: The transmission of the text to account for the discrepancy. The surviving manuscripts of Theognis preserve an anthology of ancient elegy, including selections from other elegists such as Tyrtaeus ; scholars disagree over which parts were written by Theognis. The collection is preserved in more than forty manuscripts, comprising a continuous series of elegiac couplets that modern editors now separate into some 300 to 400 "poems", according to personal preferences. The best of these manuscripts, dated to

5688-492: The word daimōn ( δαίμων , "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn ( δαήμων , "knowing or wise"); however, it is more probably daiō ( δαίω , "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot"). In Plato's Symposium , the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to

5767-457: Was a Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC. The work attributed to him consists of gnomic poetry quite typical of the time, featuring ethical maxims and practical advice about life. He was the first Greek poet known to express concern over the eventual fate and survival of his own work and, along with Homer , Hesiod and the authors of the Homeric Hymns , he is among

5846-452: Was capable of arresting imagery and memorable statements in the form of terse epigrams. Some of these qualities are evident in the following lines [425-8], considered to be "the classic formulation of Greek pessimism": Πάντων μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον, μηδ᾽ ἐσιδεῖν αὐγὰς ὀξέος ἠελίου. φύντα δ᾽ ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀΐδαο περῆσαι καὶ κεῖσθαι πολλὴν γῆν ἐπαμησάμενον. Best of all for mortal beings

5925-515: Was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in an explicitly Pythagorean context of probably late Hellenistic composition, the Pythagorean Commentaries , which evidently draws on older popular representations: ‘The whole air is full of souls. We call them daemones and heroes, and it is they who send dreams, signs and illnesses to men; and not only men, but also to sheep and other domestic animals. It

6004-574: Was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous . ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon . Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art : they are felt, but their unseen presence can only be presumed, with

6083-501: Was reinterpreted through a new Freudian prism. Around the same time Vienna Secession artist Gustav Klimt uses the irreverent, chubby-faced Silenus as a motif in several works to represent "buried instinctual forces". In Gargantua and Pantagruel , Rabelais referred to Silenus as the foster father of Bacchus. In 1884 Thomas Woolner published a long narrative poem about Silenus. In Oscar Wilde 's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , Lord Henry Wooton turns praise of folly into

6162-465: Was said in Orphic hymns to be the young god's tutor. This puts him in a company of phallic or half-animal tutors of the gods, a group that includes Priapus , Hermaphroditus , Cedalion and Chiron , but also includes Pallas , the tutor of Athena . When intoxicated, Silenus was said to possess special knowledge and the power of prophecy. The Phrygian King Midas was eager to learn from Silenus and caught

6241-400: Was to provide an explanation for the sheer variety of polytheistic religious worship; but it is the potential for moral discrimination offered by the notion of daemones which later ... became one further means of conceptualizing what distinguishes dominated practice from civic religion, and furthering the transformation of that practice into intentional profanation ... Quite when the point

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