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Theognis of Megara is an elusive figure. Known to us through a large collection of poems called the Theognidea, about fourteen hundred verses in all, and cited by Nietzsche as the spokesman for Hellenic nobility, he is nonetheless an opaque historical personage. Ancient tradition dated Theognis to the mid-sixth century B.C. On internal grounds, the Theognidea can be dated to the period 640–479 B.C. Thus, the poetry is situated between the heroic age, depicted by Homer, and the classical age, which attained its apex in the second half of the fifth century B.C. Specifically, verses 29–52 in the corpus (by which we mean the Theognidea) seem to portray a political situation in the polis ‘city-state’ of Megara that is analogous to the one prevailing before the rise to power of the Megarian tyrant Theagenes, dated roughly to the years 640–600 B.C., whereas verses 891–895 appear to bear witness to war in Euboea in the second quarter of the sixth century. Finally, verses 773–782 refer to the Persian invasion of the Megarid in 479 B.C. Clearly, the Theognidea are something more than the life’s work—however long that life may have been—of a single poet.
