CHAPTER VIII.

_THE GNOMIC POETS._

Definition of the Term Gnomic.--The Elegiac Metre.--The Age of the Despots in Greece.--Three Periods in Elegiac Poetry: the Martial, the Erotic, the Gnomic.--Callinus.--Tyrtæus.--Mimnermus.--His Epicurean Philosophy of Life.--Solon.--The Salaminian Verses.--Doctrine of Hereditary Guilt.--Greek Melancholy.--Phocylides.--His Bourgeois Intellect.--Xenophanes.--Theognis.--The Politics of Megara.--Cyrnus.--Precepts upon Education and Conduct in Public and Private Life.--The Biography of Theognis.--Dorian Clubs.--Lamentations over the Decay of Youth and Beauty Page 236