THEOGNIS

flourished 5th century BC, , Megara, near Athens elegiac poet, many of whose poems were addressed to his beloved, one Cyrnus. Theognis' poems were also much concerned with good breeding and are important for their portrayal of aristocratic society in a changing world. He allegedly wrote a poem on an unidentifiable episode in the history of Syracuse and 2,800 lines of admonitory verse, together with (or perhaps including) a collection of maxims for Cyrnus. Fewer than 1,400 lines survive. The poems ascribed to Theognis, many of them doubtfully, provide more than half the surviving corpus of classical Greek elegiac poetry.