Athenian coup of 411 BC state of Athens remained an anomaly, however, as the rest of the Greek city states were run either as tyrannies or, most often, by oligarchies. Both Thucydides and Aristotle wrote that "the revolution was provoked by defeat in Sicily." Despite the democracy in Athens, Greek tradition remained aristocratic, and the works of Homer celebrated an aristocratic world view, where the nobles made decisions and the commoners obeyed. The poems of Theognis of Megara (from the sixth century BC) and the Theban poet Pindar (of the fifth century BC) were popular among the Athenian nobles at this time, casting democracy as
Ulysses (poem) may be that Ulysses' determination to defy circumstance attracted Tennyson to the myth; he said that the poem "gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life". On another occasion, the poet stated, "There is more about myself in "Ulysses", which was written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It was more written with the feeling of his loss upon me than many poems in "In Memoriam"." Hallam's death influenced much of Tennyson's poetry, including perhaps his most