THEOGNIS (583-495 B.C.), a noble of Meg’ara, who opposed the democratic faction, and was in consequence expelled from the state and deprived of his hereditary lands by the Commons. He sang his songs in elegiac verse. Distinguished also as a gnomic poet. The following thoughts are culled from among his sayings:—“Wealth is almighty.”—“Easy among men is the practice of wickedness, but hard the method of goodness.”—“No one descends to Hades with his riches, nor can he by paying ransom escape death.”—“Prefer to live piously on small means to being rich on what is gotten unjustly.” PHOCYL’IDES of Miletus (550-490 B.C.), an Ionian gnomic poet whose didactic couplets, generally marked by sound sense, sometimes breathing a worldly spirit, began with the introductory phrase, “And this too is Phocylides’.” The following are maxims of his:—“First get your living, and then think of getting virtue.”—“A small city set upon a rock and well-governed is better than all foolish Nineveh.” XENOPH’ANES of Colophon (about 540 B.C.), founder of the Eleatic sect of philosophers: also an elegiac poet: condemns the effeminacy of his countrymen, and derides a prevailing preference for physical over intellectual culture. THE SATIRISTS. SIMONIDES THE ELDER, of Amorgus (660 B.C.), “the Iambographer: “style flowing and polished: masterpiece, a satire on women—“Even though they seem to be good, when one has got one she becomes a plague.” HIP’PONAX of Ephesus (540 B.C.), the father of parody, and inventor of the choliambic measure, or limping iambic, in which the last foot was a spondee. He attacked the luxury and vice of his day, sparing neither friend nor relative; it is told that by his crushing satire a sculptor who had caricatured his ugly person was driven to suicide. It was Hipponax who said: “Woman gives two days of happiness to man, the day of her bridal and the day of her funeral.” The stranger who passed his tomb was warned: “Wake not the sleeping wasp, for though he’s dead, Still straight and sure his crooked lines are sped.” MINOR POETS OF THE CHORAL SCHOOL. ALCMAN (671-631 B.C.), Sparta’s jovial lyric poet, an emancipated Lydian slave. STESICH’ORUS of Sicily (632-560 B.C.), inventor of the choric system; named from his occupation _Stesichorus_, leader of the chorus. His greatness foreshadowed by a nightingale that alighted on his infant lips and burst into song: hymns, fables, pastorals: the earliest Greek novelist; his love tales and romances narrated in verse. TERPANDER the Lesbian (about 650 B.C.), the founder of Greek musical science, and inventor of the heptachord, or seven-stringed lyre. IB’YCUS, of Rhegium in southern Italy (540 B.C.), lived in Samos as the friend of Polycrates, His odes principally erotic: from the warmth of his passion, Ibycus was styled “the love-maddened.”