rather part of the test, like the wine that they contained.

“We are concerned   only    with    quality,    Cyrnus, when    we  breed   sheep   and mules   and horses, and

everyone    wants   to  breed   them    from    good    stock.  But a   man of  quality,    if  someone offers  him a   fortune,

has no  scruples    about   taking  a   worthless   wife    from    a   worthless   family. Nor does    a   woman   refuse  to

be  the wife    of  a   man who’s   worthless   –   as  long    as  he’s    rich    –   choosing    wealth  over    worth.  It’s    riches

they    value.  Men of  quality get their   wives   from    worthless   stock   and worthless   men from    the upper

class.  Money   debases the race.”  (Theognis   183–90)

“Wine and truth” is a proverbial expression that appears as early as the poetry of Alcaeus, a
contemporary of Sappho’s who, like Sappho, came from the island of Lesbos and whose lyric verses are
largely connected with the symposium. The same sentiment is found in a poem by another Archaic poet,
who says:

Fire    is  used    by  experts when    it  comes   to  testing silver  and gold,   

but it’s    wine    that    brings  to  light   the temper  of  a   man.

These lines come from a collection of verses in elegiac meter that are attributed to the poet Theognis.
This collection is of interest both because its contents reflect many of the concerns of the symposium –
indeed, the symposium seems to have been the context for which these verses were composed and in
which they were performed – and because it well illustrates the tensions that we have noted earlier
between the conflicting claims of individuality and uniformity. The collection consists of a large number
of brief elegiac poems run together in a continuous sequence of nearly 1,400 verses. The poems, of which
it is difficult to tell where one ends and another begins, concern themselves with conveying sage advice,
reflect on the mutability of fortune, and rail against the nouveaux riches who threaten to debase the stock
of the well-bred. (In this connection, Charles Darwin in his The Descent of Man quotes a poem from the
collection as recognizing the importance of “selection” in the breeding of humans.) There was a poet
Theognis, who seems to have lived around 600 BC in the mainland polis of Megara, and he names himself
in one of the poems of the collection. Some of the poems in the collection, however, demonstrably date
from the fifth century, and some are clearly the work of other poets, including Tyrtaeus, so that the
collection we have is apparently an anthology of elegiac verse that grew by accretion around a core of
genuine work by Theognis.

Seals

Interestingly, Theognis seems to have anticipated that his work would suffer just this fate. In the elegy in
which he names himself, Theognis addresses his young friend Cyrnus, saying, “let a seal be placed on
these verses that I am crafting and no one will ever get away with stealing them ... Everyone will say that
these are the verses of Theognis of Megara.” By using the image of a seal, Theognis is suggesting that in
addressing his poetry to Cyrnus he is giving his friend a valuable gift, one that Cyrnus should treasure and
guard in the same way valuables are protected with a seal. In fact, we know a good deal about the use of
seals in ancient Greece, and the seal seems to be an ideal metaphor for the kind of poetry composed in the
Archaic Greek polis, poetry that, as we have seen, proclaims its individuality at the same time as it
adheres to traditional forms and themes. For the seal is a unique mark of personal identity that can be, and
is intended to be, repeatedly and exactly replicated.

The use of seals was widespread in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and western Asia as early as the
fourth millennium BC. The practice of using and producing seal stones was adopted by the inhabitants of