GOOD AND BAD AS UNDERSTOOD BY THEOGXIS. 45 liat strength and peculiarity of pure Doriau feeling, which, since the publication of O. Miiller's History of the Dorians, it has been the fashion to look for so extensively. But we see that the poet was connected with an oligarchy, of birth and not of wealth, which had recently been subverted by the breaking in of the rustic population previously subject and degraded, uhat these subjects were contented to submit to a single-headed despot, in order to escape from their former rulers, and that Theognis had himself been betrayed by his own friends and companions, strip- ped of his property, and exiled, through the wrong doing " of enemies whose blood he hopes one day to be permitted to drink." J The condition of the subject cultivators previous to this revolution he depicts in sad colors ; they " dwelt without the city, clad in goatskins, and ignorant of judicial sanctions or laws : " 2 after it, they had become citizens, and their importance had been im- mensely enhanced. And thus, according to his impression, the vile breed has trodden down the noble, the bad have become masters, and the good are no longer of any account. The bitter- ness and humiliation which attend upon poverty, and the undue ascendency which wealth confers even upon the most worthless of mankind, 3 are among the prominent subjects of his complaint, and his keen personal feeling on this point would be alone suffi- cient to show that the recent revolution had no way overthrown the influence of property; in contradiction to the opinion of Welcker, who infers without ground, from a passage of uncertain meaning, that the land of the state had been formally redivided.* Theognis, vv, 682, 715, 720, 750, 816, 914, Welcker's edition: Tuv elij fttf.av alfia melv, etc. " Theognis, v, 20. Kt'pve, TroAff ftlv $' fide Tronic, haoi 6s 6r/ ul.Tioi, Ot TrpooT?' OVTE SiKaf ijdeaciv ovrs vojiovf, dopuf alyuv KaT-pij3ov, 3 Sec, especially, the lines from 500-560, 816-830, in Welcker's edition. 4 Consult tbe Prolegomena to Welcker's edition of Theognis ; also, those sf Schneidewin (Delectus Elegiac. Poctar. pp. 46-55). The Prolegomena of Welcker are particularly valuable and full of instruc- tion. He illustrate* at great length the tendency common to Theognis, with c thur curly Greek poets, to apply the words t/ood and bad, not with reference
