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
The Lucy poems (1835–1902). Butler believed Wordsworth's use of the phrase "the difference to me!" was overly terse, and remarked that the poet was "most careful not to explain the nature of the difference which the death of Lucy will occasion him to be ... The superficial reader takes it that he is very sorry she was dead ... but he has not said this." Not every work referring to the "Lucy poems" is intended to mock, however; the novelist and essayist Mary Shelley (1797–1851) drew upon the poems to comment on and re-imagine the Romantic portrayal of femininity. The "Lucy poems" (omitting