A
Greek didactic,
elegiac poet from
Megara who lived in the 6th century BC. He wrote passionately about the two things that mattered most to him:
politics and
sex. Specifically, his hatred of the lower class rulers who had ousted the
aristocracy of
Megara, and love poems to a boy named Cyrnus. Much of his poetry against the lower classes was later used by another
Plebeian antagonist who had a similar disdane for the common man and thus the
tyranny of
Athens:
Socrates. One of the poems
Theognis wrote that
Socrates later used in his teachings to the youths of
Athens (and thus later evidence in the
Trial of Socrates) was this nice piece:
Stamp on the empty-headed people! Jab
With your pointed goad, and lay the heavy yoke
Around their necks! You won't find, under the sun
A people who love slavery so much.