The political aim of Theognis was to prevent a recurrence of tyranny in Megara[30]. What does the poet bid his townsmen beware of? Not of eloquence, not of violence, not of rashly appointing a lawgiver or αἰσυμνήτης. All his warnings are directed against wealth. The whole town of Megara had become commercial[31]. Birth had lost its prestige, and wealth acquired unprecedented power. He complains how Tradesmen reign supreme: the bad lord it over their betters[32]. This is the lesson that each and all must thoroughly master: How that in all the world wealth has the might and the power[33]. Many a bad man is rich, and many a good man needy[34]. Not without cause, O wealth, do men honour thee above all things[35]. Most men reckon the only virtue the making of money[36]. Everyone honours those that are rich, and despises the needy[37]. When he explicitly alludes to the dangers of the establishment of a tyranny, his references to wealth are no less prominent: Neither exalt thou in hope, _by yielding to gain_, any tyrant[38]. Cyrnus, this city is pregnant. I fear lest a man it may bear us Swollen with insolent pride[39], leader in stern civil strife[40]. The couplet last quoted almost certainly refers to a possible tyrant. Insolent pride (ὕβρις) is one of the tyrant’s stock characteristics[41]. There is no reference to wealth in this particular context. But there can be little doubt that this same character is also referred to earlier in the poem. Who, the poet asks, can preserve his reverence for the Gods: When that a man unjust and presumptuous, one that regardeth Neither the wrath of a man, no, nor the wrath of a God, _Glutted with wealth_ waxes proud and insolent[42]? In this last passage the pride and insolence are directly attributed to enormous wealth. Or again: Be thou sure that not long will that city remain unshaken, Even though now it may lie wrapped in the deepest repose, Soon as soever to those that are bad these things become pleasing— Gains that, whenever they come, bring with them ill for the state. For from these arise factions, murders of men by their kindred, Despots withal[43]. What are the gains that lead up to tyranny? Is it not most probable that they are some form of payment received by the commons (“those that are bad”) from the would-be tyrant[44]? Solon and Theognis wrote with the examples of Gyges, Pheidon, Orthagoras, Cypselus, Theagenes and the rest of the seventh century tyrants before them[45]. If they constantly feared that some wealthy tradesman[46] would make himself tyrant, it must surely have been because the tyrants had sprung from or been allied with this new class of wealthy traders and financiers. [Sidenote: (_b_) the fifth century writers (Thucydides, Herodotus, Pindar),]