It was natural that Theognis and his contemporaries should regard the lot of man with a pessimism exceeding that of Homer. As they looked about them they saw evil everywhere, the good afflicted, the wicked prosperous. They were oppressed by the weakness of humanity, so that their verses with regard to man and his lot are gloomy indeed—so much so that in one passage Theognis declares that in reality no mortal man on whom the sun shines is truly happy. Again he holds that man can have no foresight into the future, for it is hardest of all, he says, to learn the end of a thing as yet unaccomplished, to know how god will bring that to pass; a mist is stretched before men’s eyes, and there is no way for mortals to test and try the outcome of the future.[101] The poet feels a deep despair, when he reflects that no knowledge or foresight for mortals is possible, but the gods accomplish everything according to their will; and because there is little hope of implanting virtue in men, then it were better not to be born at all and never to have seen the bright rays of the sun. But since this may not be, then he is most fortunate who enters Hades most quickly, and has a high mound of earth heaped over him.[102] Still there are other passages which show that man’s case was not considered wholly hopeless. There is an appeal to self-pride, an expression of the view that poverty is the test of a man, that has a tonic sound. The poet says that poverty reveals the worthless man and the superior whenever need of money comes on them, for the mind of the good man, whose thought is ever upright in his heart, thinks only of justice.[103] In another place he assures his young friend that the good man ever has his wit with him, and his courage, whether he be in adversity or in good fortune. But if a god gives abundance and riches to a base creature, then he in his folly cannot restrain his baseness.[104] Again the poet exhorts his own soul: “Endure, my soul, although thou hast suffered unendurable things at the hands of the wicked”; he bids it not be distressed or angry over misfortune and disaster, nor to blame friends or cheer enemies by failure: “For mortal man may not easily escape the fated gifts of the gods, though he dive into the very depth of the purple sea, or even when the dark shadow of Tartarus holds him.”[105] Thus we see that the poet, in spite of his pessimism and of his realization of the hardship and injustice in the world, still urged his young friend to face it in the same spirit in which the later Stoics like Marcus Aurelius exhorted themselves to endure.