Gnomic poetry in the context of Henry Peacham (born 1578)

Byzantine literature is the Greek literature of the Middle Ages, whether written in the Byzantine Empire or outside its borders. It was marked by a linguistic diglossy; two distinct forms of Byzantine Greek were used, a scholarly dialect based on Attic Greek, and a vernacular based on Koine Greek. Most scholars consider 'literature' to include all medieval Greek texts, but some define it with specific constraints. Byzantine literature is the successor to Ancient Greek literature and forms the basis of Modern Greek literature, although it overlaps with both periods.

The tradition saw the competing influences of Hellenism, Christianity, and earlier in the empire's history, Paganism. There was a general flourishing of gnomai, hagiography, sermons, and particularly historiography, which became less individual-focused. Poetry was often limited to musical hymnal forms, or the more niche epigram tradition, while ancient dramas and epics became obsolete. The influential romantic epic Digenes Akritas is a major exception.

Theognis of Megara (Ancient Greek: Θέογνις ὁ Μεγαρεύς, Théognis ho Megareús) was a Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC. The work attributed to him consists of gnomic poetry quite typical of the time, featuring ethical maxims and practical advice about life. He was the first Greek poet known to express concern over the eventual fate and survival of his own work and, along with Homer, Hesiod and the authors of the Homeric Hymns, he is among the earliest poets whose work has been preserved in a continuous manuscript tradition (the work of other archaic poets is preserved as scattered fragments).

More than half of the extant elegiac poetry of Greece before the Alexandrian period is included in the approximately 1,400 lines of verse attributed to him, though several poems traditionally attributed to him were composed by others, e.g. Solon and Euenus. Some of these verses inspired ancient commentators to value him as a moralist yet the entire corpus is valued today for its "warts and all" portrayal of aristocratic life in archaic Greece.

The Purananuru (Tamil: புறநானூறு, Puṟanāṉūṟu, literally "four hundred [poems] in the genre puram"), sometimes called Puram or Purappattu, is a classical Tamil poetic work and traditionally the last of the Eight Anthologies (Ettuthokai) in the Sangam literature. It is a collection of 400 heroic poems about kings, wars and public life, of which two are lost and a few have survived into the modern age in fragments. The collected poems were composed by 157 poets, of which 14 were anonymous and at least 10 were women. This anthology has been variously dated between 1st century BCE and 5th century CE, with Kamil Zvelebil, a Tamil literature scholar, dating predominantly all of the poems of Purananuru sometime between 2nd and 5th century CE. Nevertheless, few poems are dated to the period of 1st century BCE.

The Purananuru anthology is diverse. Of its 400 poems, 138 praise 43 kings – 18 from the Chera dynasty, 13 Chola dynasty kings, and 12 Early Pandya dynasty kings. Another 141 poems praise 48 chieftains. These panegyric poems recite their heroic deeds, as well as another 109 poems that recount deeds of anonymous heroes, likely of older Tamil oral tradition. Some of the poems are gnomic in nature, which have attracted unrealistic attempts to read an ethical message, states Zvelebil. The poetry largely focuses on war, means of war such as horses, heroic deeds, widowhood, hardships, impermanence, and other effects of wars between kingdoms based along the rivers Kaveri, Periyar and Vaigai.

Semonides of Amorgos (/sɪˈmɒnɪˌdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Σημωνίδης ὁ Ἀμοργῖνος, variantly Σιμωνίδης; fl. 7th century BC) was a Greek iambic and elegiac poet who is believed to have lived during the seventh century BC. Fragments of his poetry survive as quotations in other ancient authors, the most extensive and well known of which is a satiric account of different types of women which is often cited in discussions of misogyny in Archaic Greece. The poem takes the form of a catalogue, with each type of woman represented by an animal whose characteristics—in the poet's scheme—are also characteristic of a large body of the female population.

Other fragments belong to the registers of gnomic poetry and wisdom literature in which the Hesiodic Works and Days and the Theognidea are classed, and reflect a similarly pessimistic view of the human experience. There is also evidence that Semonides composed the sort of personal invective found in the work of his near contemporary iambographer Archilochus and the later Hipponax, but no surviving fragment can be securely attributed to such a poem.

"The Fortunes of Men", also "The Fates of Men" or "The Fates of Mortals", is the title given to an Old English gnomic poem of 98 lines in the Exeter Book, fols. 87a–88b.